Sunday, March 9, 2008

I think I prefer mallards

"I want to thank you," he said to her on the street walking, "for making me ----" And she smiled inside, blushed a little and thought, I want to thank you for suddenly making me a person who smiles all the time. Even inside, which is a difference surely. And, wish I could thank you aloud.

But it wasn't about anything, and all the things to articulate she wished she could find a way to. Maybe a communication blew away, and there goes a breeze through an open window by her face, so she mustered a congratulation directed at herself. For holding things in and letting them go. Searching knee deep for polaroids, because it seemed that one day they were all here, all of them, or many, and then suddenly she's knee deep in tissues and polkadot dresses and beckett plays and splatterpainted helmets, more ugly sweaters and sewing needles. She thought it strange to be covered head over foot in loved ones, falling head over heels and laughing, jumping nearly to slip and fall, and everyone all afraid of the rooftop. But not scared enough to be tantalized and cajoled into viewing a city light. And makingout up there in the fresh. Funny and lovely for them everywhere, crawling all over a body or smiling at a knee, handing a lit cigarette, passing a jar of wine, lit from below in a sweaty bed. And what's left then is just the sweat, scent of it still staining sepia on the cotton sheets, those polaroids and that truth of an actual illness well deserved. 

We find ourselves wanting to ask one another about atrocities experienced. And blisses, oh and blisses, can't we make them ourselves? Wondering quietly and just secret.

No comments: