Ode to Don, March 1996.
The lid cracks open, to let in the light of the morning. Tones of time passing chime in tinny, arrhythmic harmony, winding me up and spinning me ciruclar. Six years and the lid drops and bends me over again, my legs molded perfectly to form in fifth position. Pink netting bunched and prickling at my waistband. I can't scratch it, my fingers still grope for the halo above my head, now between my ankles. The oval mirror behind me ceases to show your reflection. The rotation of your shoulder no longer captured on the edge of the glass while your hand reaches back to turn the key.
I fall unsteadily into the car and drive to the site of the inurnment, the community niche where you lie in a jar, behind cold marble and locked up tight, I know because I push on the door. The plastic plaque says everything, my focal point, my saving grace in this place of God where neither of us belong. Your name is half curves and half angles (half angels) and speaks to me louder than one dull brass urn, weighted like any jar of dry pumice sand.
How difficult it must have been for you to come, you say, bent over your legs like that, in a box.
Nighttime. How strange to feel anger at this body I hold so dear, wholly a prisoner of it, trapped within it.
Bars of bone hold me captive, I say, devious guards in league with gravity and consciousness to keep me from you.
Did we speak of the time you danced for me in the courtyard? We don't remember, how you spun and twirled for Her Majesty, your ragabond troupe fearing the worst. You were forced by the guards to the night and I wept for you. If only it were my memory (though I believed her when she told me), my colors in the velvet of your tunic and the high stone walls gem-encrusted. Your tune in the flutes and lyres, a gift of sound you loved and lived with, lived for.
It all exists, buried beneath my life, your life, what I find to make it real in this vivid empty space the shape of you. I touch everything, numb objects that have no meaning to me at all. We run our fingers down creases and in corners, crave soul and fire. Two hands seek purchase, how to form the triad? Euclid's rules, now it's just a bended line. Draw your energy from the very walls that housed you. Snapshots, flashbulbs on my retina when I push hard against my eyelids. Commit to image what drowns in words, stage the play with no dialogue, ineffective language does not convey. No sound.
Your light (she said it was pink, white, bright and big like a blanket that covered me) breaks apart the photos and joins them, bonding with their molecular structure and quickly reshaping, complex. It happens too fast for me to notice. I can't look, the glare burns my eyes and their noise jumps off the paper to strike me.
Two days after, they say I have a glow about me, a beauty they haven't seen before. Sorrow flatters me. Sorrow flattens me. They hold me up while I walk, to keep my head from striking the dark wood of the pews in this place where neither of us can breathe. I wait impatiently for my turn, the words are salt and wet and choking and I reach back because I can't reach forward I can't reach.
My mother always said I was beautiful in pink, I never chose it. I picked yellow, for light and day and hope; it turned my skin sallow and she put the dress back on the hanger.
When the phone rings at this time of the morning, it's always you. How fitting, you should choose this time to decide and it would ring and tell me. That voice, the voice that edges the triangle says it twice so I will believe it. I say I'm coming, I'm grabbing my coat, I'll be there soon. I hang up to find the night waiting and your life flashing before my eyes.
Yellow is brass is an empty urn, is this pencil I (could) use to draw curves and angles and angels. Key that turns the flywheel plays your music spins me round round. Pink is red is my eye, is this light that I pull over me to keep warm.
The lid cracks open, to let in the light of the morning. Tones of time passing chime in tinny, arrhythmic harmony, winding me up and spinning me ciruclar. Six years and the lid drops and bends me over again, my legs molded perfectly to form in fifth position. Pink netting bunched and prickling at my waistband. I can't scratch it, my fingers still grope for the halo above my head, now between my ankles. The oval mirror behind me ceases to show your reflection. The rotation of your shoulder no longer captured on the edge of the glass while your hand reaches back to turn the key.
I fall unsteadily into the car and drive to the site of the inurnment, the community niche where you lie in a jar, behind cold marble and locked up tight, I know because I push on the door. The plastic plaque says everything, my focal point, my saving grace in this place of God where neither of us belong. Your name is half curves and half angles (half angels) and speaks to me louder than one dull brass urn, weighted like any jar of dry pumice sand.
How difficult it must have been for you to come, you say, bent over your legs like that, in a box.
Nighttime. How strange to feel anger at this body I hold so dear, wholly a prisoner of it, trapped within it.
Bars of bone hold me captive, I say, devious guards in league with gravity and consciousness to keep me from you.
Did we speak of the time you danced for me in the courtyard? We don't remember, how you spun and twirled for Her Majesty, your ragabond troupe fearing the worst. You were forced by the guards to the night and I wept for you. If only it were my memory (though I believed her when she told me), my colors in the velvet of your tunic and the high stone walls gem-encrusted. Your tune in the flutes and lyres, a gift of sound you loved and lived with, lived for.
It all exists, buried beneath my life, your life, what I find to make it real in this vivid empty space the shape of you. I touch everything, numb objects that have no meaning to me at all. We run our fingers down creases and in corners, crave soul and fire. Two hands seek purchase, how to form the triad? Euclid's rules, now it's just a bended line. Draw your energy from the very walls that housed you. Snapshots, flashbulbs on my retina when I push hard against my eyelids. Commit to image what drowns in words, stage the play with no dialogue, ineffective language does not convey. No sound.
Your light (she said it was pink, white, bright and big like a blanket that covered me) breaks apart the photos and joins them, bonding with their molecular structure and quickly reshaping, complex. It happens too fast for me to notice. I can't look, the glare burns my eyes and their noise jumps off the paper to strike me.
Two days after, they say I have a glow about me, a beauty they haven't seen before. Sorrow flatters me. Sorrow flattens me. They hold me up while I walk, to keep my head from striking the dark wood of the pews in this place where neither of us can breathe. I wait impatiently for my turn, the words are salt and wet and choking and I reach back because I can't reach forward I can't reach.
My mother always said I was beautiful in pink, I never chose it. I picked yellow, for light and day and hope; it turned my skin sallow and she put the dress back on the hanger.
When the phone rings at this time of the morning, it's always you. How fitting, you should choose this time to decide and it would ring and tell me. That voice, the voice that edges the triangle says it twice so I will believe it. I say I'm coming, I'm grabbing my coat, I'll be there soon. I hang up to find the night waiting and your life flashing before my eyes.
Yellow is brass is an empty urn, is this pencil I (could) use to draw curves and angles and angels. Key that turns the flywheel plays your music spins me round round. Pink is red is my eye, is this light that I pull over me to keep warm.
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