2/2/23

Are you familiar with being at the airport and a waiter calls you darlin’ when he folds your check in half and turns it over so that the two of your share a secret?

Treating the cold as an old friend:
On the sidewalk are ancient electronics, goodbyes to babies with rain coverings on their strollers, a kind of beautiful neighborhood.

He wore blue on blue- blue jeans, blue work-shirt, a flap over the front pocket. If a bottle were the right size, it’d become his spittoon. When he quit dip, he tacked chewed Nicorette to the tops of la Croix cans. He went to his grave like this. I vaguely remember thirty-seven of his 69 birthdays. I keenly remember his 70th.

He knew when hinges were loose on a door in its frame because he built houses, hung doors and thought hard about these things. His germs had built a fortress in his living quarters atop his paraphernalia.
When you die, you have less secrets. Is this normal?

Have you ever lived at the dead-end of a dirt road? Your mother a nurse. Your father a carpenter. You sister a big help. Your brothers a handful. Then you go to the city. Because you love the buzz. And all the places seem made for you. And you sit out these waves in your life, doing this and that. They put in new stoplights. They make more city. And you feel poor and you never feel cosmopolitan. You take care of cosmopolitan children. You take them to violin, and then one day, the children are yours. You had them. And your mom lost power so she made pancakes on the wood-burning stove. Your dad’s gone and your mom took up his love of guns. Your city isn’t safe and your country isn’t peaceful. (You heard shots the other night. In your street, someone yelled get down, then bam bam, then a Honda civic does a 180. Police. Don’t shoot.)

I still can’t always decipher the cry. Why is she crying? Why are they crying? Was it something I did? Are they wet? Hungry? Cold? Unlearning my mistakes?

Have you listened too much? Were you dry and warm these last three days?