I looked up from the sink
and for a split second saw my brother--
something in the mouth, unshaven and
indeterminate, not the presence of despair
but the absence of acknowledgment,
a blankness, eyes half-lidded, half-alive
with nothing. We can see in the dark,
we can speak a fluent tongue,
as though there's something in the mouth
that speaks for us, despite our
reticence, our fear, our alarming desire.
One only knows the hands before him,
not mirrors, or even books. We only know
our mouths by our tongues and infant's hands.
My mouth is half-closed, my mouth
works soundlessly, unlike dad's, silently
forming vowels on billboards, street signs,
and palm fronds out the car window, a
child's mouth--safety glass.
No mouth can break, no hand can
wander without finding, no tooth or nail
remains uncut upon the world--living edges
of the body! Finding loosens fears and
tightens grips.
I'll never know my brother the way a hand
finds a palm in prayer--in that we're
equal, still. But still, I saw his
face today, and found a brother
living there, as though an eye
can see with words, as though there's
something in the mouth to bind us.
The more my life stabilizes and "normalizes," the more uncomfortable and afraid I become. I've noticed that, as I approach thinking about my dad, I sense a terrifying, unbearable weight in a way that is frighteningly new. It is as though I've spent so much time building, straining and suffering that now, having a weight lifted makes the reality of my life all too clear. Maybe, because I can never consider my life "normal" without my dad, the more "normal" it becomes, the sadder it is to acknowledge it.
I've never before in my life avoided thinking about anything, but now I find myself afraid to think about my dad, about his enormous absence, about the unbelievable hole in my existence without him. How could he be ... dead? The word makes no sense coming out of me. I look at it like I've never seen it before. The longer I avoid thinking about this, the stranger and more awful it becomes, until the mere onset of the thought threatens to make me nauseous with revulsion.
I may be learning that this process will recur over the rest of my life. I suppose, then, I'd better get used to it. I don't expect the sadness or loss to just go away, and I never have. But I may have expected it to lessen--but as I've described, in some ways it has intensified. I feel like the only way to be comfortable with this weight of loss is to be physically and emotionally discomfited, not "stressed," but rather occupied with pain. I sometimes long for some kind of bodily torment, not to hurt but rather to strengthen. Comfort dulls the senses--comfort renders a man insentient, incapable of even recognizing what he once would have felt.
It's just unbelievable that the last time I saw my father was outside of some restaurant in Ocala with Leah. We had gone down to meet him since he often had business there or nearby. I recall how conspicuously brief his hug was. Now I realize how desperately he must have been trying to hold it together. I never saw him cry, but I heard him choke up once, on the phone. I was shocked and incredibly saddened, but I sincerely thought he'd be alright. We all did.
I wonder what kind of state he was in when he did it. Perhaps he was peaceful, anticipating a final exit, relishing the thought of rest. I wonder what the last thing he thought about was before he pulled the trigger.
"Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that "forever" that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days. Until the very end, their inevitable end, Nikon refused to accept that the hero might have drowned two weeks later when his boat struck a reef in the Southern Hebrides. Or that the heroine was run over by a car three months later. Or that maybe everything turned out differently, in a thousand different ways: one of them had an affair, one of them became bitter or bored, one of them wanted to back out. Maybe nights full of tears, silence and loneliness followed that screen kiss. Maybe cancer killed him before he was forty. Maybe she lived on and died in an old folks' home at the age of ninety. Maybe the handsome officer turned into a pathetic ruin, his wounds becoming hideous scars and his glorious battles forgotten by all. And maybe, old and defenseless, the hero and heroine suffered ordeals without the strength to fight or defend themselves, tossed this way and that by the storms of life, by stupidity, by cruelty, by the miserable human condition."
---------
"How do you see Lucifer?" she asked.
"No idea." Corso grimaced, indifferent. "Taciturn and silent, I suppose. Boring." His expression became acid. "On a throne in a deserted hall. At the center of a cold, desolate, monotonous kingdom where nothing ever happens."
--Both from "El Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, trans. Sonia Soto.
Come lie next to me
Know why, you and me are one
Come lie next to me
No lies, you and me are one
You know I'm not a saint.
---------------
I don't know how to live, nor how to love. I've been unfolded, sapped of life, reconstituted in some perverted form. The image isn't mine.
------
I'll miss you my love, but it's about time
That this world goes up in flames.