—DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD BE SO CRUEL

Swimming

I suppose we were swimming. Or trying to. Dogpaddling is probably the way to describe it. Our clothes sat in two heaps on the shore. From there they looked like dreams that had melted. I swallowed half a lake that day. Burped some back. Nature was too good for me. Anything good was too good for me. Except you. The sun was a big toe blister. Raw. Pink going scarlet. He waited on the shore for us. Belt in hand. Like a ring master at the circus. We were young animals. Love was a word we’d heard. We swam that way. The only direction home. Then we reversed. Swam opposite. Toward the evergreens. Their limbs. Like arms that might hold us. Their needles laughing in the breeze.

 

—I DON’T NEED YOU TO FIX WHAT I’D RATHER FORGET

  

…There’s only so much love can do.

 

…What good is the truth if you’re the only who knows it?

 

…I’m nothing if not superstitious.

 

…It gets pretty heavy, trying to lift someone up, day after day. Your arms burn and you can’t help but think how much easier it would be to just rest for a while.

 

…People have done harder things. Nobody I know, but still.

 

…You can dress it up all you want, but underneath, it’s still what it is.

 

--Are going to make it?

--I don’t know.

 

…Temperature’s up to 95.

 

…The air doesn’t get thicker for no reason.

 

…“The point of art is to unsettle.” Liz Robbins

 

…I’m not sad, I’m just always here.

 

…It doesn’t have to make sense to be real.

 

…Bay was right: Grief is anything but linear.

 

…“I think there was some jobbling going on.”

 

…Oh yeah, it’s right there.

 

…How you say what you mean changes what you say.

 

…Ghosts say funny things when they’re part of your family.

 

…“Yoo are not your thoughts.” Jill Weber PhD 

 

…Catch the world when it’s being good to you.

 

…Sorry, but I might need a jump.

 

…“Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.” Ocean Voung, Time is a Mother

 

…Maybe that’s the answer—only trust your best friend with your worst.

 

…If all we need is love, why do we always want more?

 

…People rarely do what they say they will or what they should.

 

…What do you tell someone when they’re looking for reassurance that you can’t legitimately give them?

 

…I think I’m doing the right thing isn’t always the right thing to do.

 

…A writer who can’t write is one of the saddest creatures alive.

 

…We need to talk is never a good way to start a conversation.

 

…A lot of times I keep my thoughts to myself because silence can’t be misquoted.

 

…A lot of times I think, God damn, life isn’t so bad.

 

…“You’re a fucking mess.”

 

…The stars saw it all.

 

… I realized my friends might be too important to me.

 

…“I love the idea of being a cheetah, because they run really fast. But it feels like a stressful life.” Emma Pattee, Tilt

 

…Poor, Stevie Nicks, always barking at nothing. Can’t you just give her to me? I’m right here.

 

…I had a dog once—Lucy. She was the best dog ever.

 

…You can’t find your way if you don’t where it is you’re supposed to be going.

 

…It’s pretty convenient to believe in God right now, depending on which chair you’re sitting in.

 

…Every day I wake up with the feeling I’ve already heard bad news though I’m not sure if it’s worse than the day before.

 

…It’s hard to be upbeat anymore. I mean, who could be excited for the apocalypse?

 

…Like last week—do you not see how impossibly awful that was?

 

…These are the things I’m trying to figure out sooner than later.

 

…The truth is, I never knew.

 

…Yesterday, you said tomorrow.

“Want to watch coverage of the politicians encouraging fascism or the politicians doing absolutely nothing to stop it?”

 

…I’m just a prop, and props don’t speak.

 

…Nobody wants to be the guy who didn’t nod to that question.

 

…Just let it go. Just don’t make it a thing.

 

…Sometimes I’m so scared I’m numb.

 

…The more scared you get, the nicer you have to be.

 

…What a day. Just give me a sec and I’ll stand back up.

 

…Whatever is about to happen, I don’t want to live it.

 

…That could have been so much worse. That could have been so bad. 

 

… “Try and get more comfortable with the idea that it’s impossible to prevent ourselves from letting others down,” Dr. Jennifer Reid

 

…I was to start, Reasons to be Happy, but that hasn’t worked out so great yet.

 

…Is it worse to try and fail than to not try at all? Because when you don’t try, you can’t always imagine the life you could have lived.

 

…I don’t think it’s like this for most people, which sometimes leaves me sacred.

 

…I guess it does. Does it really go that way?

 

…Why can’t things be simple, like they were before when I was sinner?

  

…“And that’s the problem, see, that’s the whole problem. The things on my mind are unfit for a fetus to hear.” Emma Pattee, Tilt 

 

…I might be there tomorrow.

 

…I’ll be better tomorrow.

 

…Okay, here’s what I’m going to do (…)

 

…It’s not a competition, but somebody’s gotta win, right?

 

…You know you’re really lonely when you read every email in your Junk folder.

 

…“Tell me, what’s going on?”

 

… No offense, but…

 

…Correct me if I’m wrong…

 

…“Mercy is small but the earth is smaller.” Ocean Voung, Time is a Mother

 

…What can possibly go wrong?

 

…Nothing worthwhile or enduring works immediately.

 

…I’m not a martyr. I’m never doing anything close to being called that. But it still doesn’t feel good.

 

...At this point, it’s probably smart to stop asking.

 

…A lot of my friends, and even family, will say, “I can’t do anything about it, so why worry about it?” But that’s just not me, even if I know I can’t do anything about it.

 

…I guess it doesn’t matter, though there are a lot of great reasons to be happy.

 

...I really like the intro. Sorry for re-playing it so much, but it means something to me.

 

…It’s not that I’m not sympathetic.

 

…People will tell you that everything is clear in hindsight, but really, it’s just rewritten.

 

…It’s just you and me now.

 

—IS THERE ROOM ON YOUR SHOULDERS?

 

The Upside

At least I didn’t find you. 

At least I loaned you that chunk of money the first time (though not the second). 

At least we were best friends going on 16 years. 

At least you got to call me a Dick and we both got a jolly laugh out of that. 

At least no one got hurt (until they did).

At least we bought each other’s books (and drinks). 

At least we knew who the frauds and wolves were among us.

At least you knew how much I loved you. 

At least one of us is still alive to write this.   

 

—FLY ROBIN, FLY

Hollow

We were going to live forever, your blind cats too, that was the plan, but every bottle had a hole in it, every glass a crack that leaked, and the riverbeds were dry and the sun thirsted like an iguana in the desert, and you kept saying, Give me one more week, Give me one more week, until forever fell apart, leaving us both bone dry and broken, two empties made of hollow glass.

 

     Karen Stefano passed away last weekend. Some of you who come here knew her. She was one of my very best friends and favorite people. I loved making her laugh. 

     She was a writer and ran one of the first podcasts highlighting authors from the indie world. 

      A former San Diego prosecutor who earned a judgeship, she was a badass, so smart and bright, sarcastic and funny as hell, but she was also incredibly kind, fiercely loyal and one of the best listeners I’ve ever met. 

     There’s obviously much more I could say about Karen and even writing this was a challenge. I’m still crushed beyond measure but just wanted to let those know who need to. I’m unsure what her relatives have planned, but I can give you details once I learn them.     

 

--- YEAH, I GET OVEHWELMED, I GET STRESSED OUT, I’M ALWAYS THINKINIG ABOUT MY HEALTH

 

                                                                   Black Diamonds

       As they walk, the wet pavement sparkles black and diamondy.  Overhead streetlights shine down on them their blessings, his new wife clamped inside his right arm, his daughter hooked against the left, this merry, makeshift family.  They laugh.  It was a stupid movie.  Why do they even make them?  As a car leaps the stoplight, he reacts blink-fast.  He has time but to save one.

At the funeral, dirt clods pound the mahogany lid like infant fists.  On knees, he shudders.  His wife bends down.  “Shhh,” she says.  “It wasn’t your fault.”

At night he never sleeps.  Instead he counts stars and slivers of light.  He remembers the stories his mother read him, the tales of fairies and angel dust, the ones of angels safeguarding on windowsills.

       He watches the drapes dance, their sheer cloth gauzy, ghostly.  The window is closed but then he hears it, mercy, the heater kicking off, and he lets his breathing resume.   

     

  1637 -- A Place Called Mistick  

 

            My brother rips off a strip of deer meat and chews while saying, “We should kill them all.  Woman and children, too.”

            His long brown hair is tied in a ponytail and he’s shirtless.  Wisps of wood smoke curl behind his back where a breeze twirls and the effect of this sight, mixed with Running Boar’s smoldering anger, makes me grin.

            My brother kicks me, his toe as sharp as an arrowhead through the moccasin.  Running Boar’s eyes are black holes, each with a center flame of red.  His face twists and contorts.  He has finger-painted two blue slashes on either side of his high cheek bones.  War paint.  He is too eager.  Even Father tells him to settle down.  “We are so many.  They are but few.  This is our land.”  Still, my brother is a fuse, an angry coil.  Once upon a time, though, we played with pet squirrels and swam streams.  We used to chase mountain goats when we were younger, trying to out run them, but now we are men and my brother is all about decimating the white man, greedy to make their blood soak through the sun-baked soil of these rolling hills.

            “If you are Pequot, you will not stand by and watch these invaders steal our land,” Running Boar says.  “You are a fool with your happy ways.”

            I have not told my brother that I am in love with First To Dance, she with eyes as blue as turquoise.  Running Boar once loved her himself, but now the white man crushes his heart.

First To Dance is pale for a Pequot but her smile is ripe.  I see her raising our strong sons.  I see myself loving her as an old man, loving her all the days of my life.

Running Boar says, “You are too comfortable.  You stare into the sky and spin silly thoughts.”

“Yes, it’s true,” I say.

“Someday the snake will draw your blood.”

I make a phony motion as if my hand’s been bitten.  I jerk it to resemble spasms of spurting blood.  Running Boar has no choice but to laugh.  “My brother is crazy,” he says, shaking his head.

I believe we are no different than the white man.  We have dissimilar skins, yes, and different customs, but our bodies and minds are composed of the same chemicals.  We should be able to coexist.  I am thinking this in my hammock on a morning when a few tiny birds chatter atop a bushy tree.  

Today I will tell First To Dance of my feelings for her.  She knows them already, but it’s better if I say these things with words to her so-pretty face.

Afterward I will ride into the settlement which sits in a valley fifteen miles from Mystic.  I will ask to meet with Mr. John Gardner who is chief of the white men there.  I will broker an agreement to ensure peace.  I am certain Mr. John Gardner wants this as much as most of our people.  If he resists, I will go to our brothers from the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes and gain their heavy muscle.  But we will not make war.  Fighting is what animals do.  

I’m about to lift my body and start my day when I feel the air tremble, the ground shuddering.  Birds squawk and scatter.  I can hear hundreds of hooves pounding like thunder.    In the distance, a dust cloud hovers over the peak of a hill.

Running Boar screams.  He is the first, but the rest of us follow.  Bullets and arrows.  Metal and flame.  One by one, we are erased from history.