Wisdom

What the hell?.....1

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What the hell?!!!..............3

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The leaf I picked melted in my hands before I got home, its small little spine warped and bent, its fleshy green body like the webbing of a bats wing. Laid in the first little brown puddle, I think it is still out there floating, still turning in a nonexistent breeze, trying to make sense of a direction. Regardless, I know that it will sink, will drown, will die without a life, will melt into the meaningless, murky water.5

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I’m broken.7

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I dont think that anybody can see this in the glimpses that they see—already more than they usually do. I don’t believe that they also saw the way that double-bass stared at me all day, plucked its little takings from the skin behind my chest. I won at gin rummy twice today, but the eyes of the bass stared at me. It’s one of the oldest at the school, a faded olivy-brown, great scratches and gouges in the front and from the corners, where the hands go. Where the hands go. But the strings are new. I remember when they needed replacing, as one snapped like a gunshot and scared me half to death. I think he wore that stupid bow-tie that day too, and it was too long too long that it took for the string to twang, silver and thick as a small rope, against the etched black surface where the fingers go. Where the fingers go.9

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The first time it breaks it is fantastic, it is powerful, it comes forth in waves and gushes of a harsh and broken light, choking off the voice with its power. The second time it comes is smaller, as is the next time, and the next, and the next, and the next until little sparks of light burning in my stomach and at the top of my throat are the bitterness and they are the constant, each second bringing a new break, each thought bringing a new break.11

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It’s the big purple elephant in the corner of the room.13

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Figures that I’m the one it chooses to follow around. (or is it the other way around?)15

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It’s the strange phantom twangs of a silver-faced guitar, left in the photography room and played deftly but silently on those days when there was nothing to do and we sat in the cracked wooden chairs at the gray and lifeless tables, half-living and half-believing in the sounds of the strains of the fingers on the strings in the ruined and cracking black case, propped a little open in the corner where the books used as weights and the binders of the youngers belong.17

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It’s the spilling coffee running on the floor, pouring between my small white fingers trying to stem the flow of the burning thing. The burning thing. It is the burning and constant thing.19

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It’s the smell on his coattails that goes through the room...the darkness enhanced in his eyes...the smallness of the speech. It’s a late entrance to orchestra, and a convoluted explanation neither I nor the teacher believes. But he does not mean for me to believe, and the teacher does believe strange enough, and I give it a half-laugh for measure when the class is over and before he leaves to go do what I do not want to know do not care to know. It’s the mark of a disappointment, muffled by a hand, a phrase an attitude I do not can not mean but that must be done because I cannot change him or who he is or what he chooses to do. I wonder which of us hurt more. I continue to wonder this, as I think I always have.21

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It’s the push of a dying dahlia, pressing against the sides of my throat and hurting the parts of me that my throat does not touch, that air does not touch, that are made of light and water and the cracks of every time it breaks. Hurting those parts of me and every part of me.23

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It’s the green arm of a fallen deity, pushed far away to the darkness where I cannot see it and where it can be left alone and forgotten until I wish to see it. And then it is dragged clawing from the darkness that has become its home, and is transformed into iron bands around my chest. And I can not breathe. I can not breathe and I am cut into pieces and those parts inside of me break and flood and I curse and I scream and I fly apart at the edges and I implode to the size of a grain of sand or salt or a worthless diamond and I am broken. Broken.25

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It’s a picture of a tar-paper house I saw one time but recognize instantly. Its a draft a draft a draft a draft a draft a ream of paper and of chemicals and a single picture in a wooden frame with a scrawled signature. An image of silver and black and aspen trees, beautiful and perfect and alone.27

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It’s a picture of a dead bat in a bell jar, decaying but the smell-does-not-reach us. I can’t really tell the truth and if it is not a bat it is an angle or a fish or a pen and a flashlight.29

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It’s two cracks cut across the ceramic and a circle of coffee and a thermos attached at the hip and an addiction and a part of Him that is gone too because the taste is death to me. Again.31

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It’s the lyrics of the first song on the dying stereo precariously perched near the chemicals, and the jingle jangle of a voice. A voice. It too is death to me.33

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I put this off.35

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There’s one excuse, there another, there another. An examination, two more a week and then it is gone (?). And I can rest and fly apart at the edges. But to keep going like this...already half of a tragedy has melted into my skin and blackened my bones and become a part of my hands and my eyes and the music in my ears. And it has to continue.37

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It is a web search morning, night, in-between. Nothing nothing nothing. Always nothing. And nobody knows a thing. And does he imagine that I feel this way about it? It’s impossible. But just as he does not know, I can not know. I have felt and I have touched that reservoir of darkness and I have recoiled, and it is there consuming him and killing him and I know it and I am here and he is there and there is nothing nothing nothing. Even in these dreams there is nothing.39

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In these dreams there are orange doors and graying carpet and a handshake a handshake a handshake to people I do not know, following him and knowing it is him but it is not him, because the way he walks is broken and strange. Because I know the way he walks and it is strange and it is awkward and it is him...like he is never taking a full step, but a half one, and the tension that turns into almost a glide. It makes no sense. But I know it and that is one of the things I cannot touch and I miss. But in these dreams the walk was broken, and I knew it was him and I knew I found him and the handshakes were worth it, the meaningless people were worth it because I found him. And to ask him if he was all right.....and the look on his face. I know this was a dream and I have to keep it at the level of reality of a dream and I have to forget what I know because of the look on his face, like he was broken like me and his features rearranged and his eyes—his eyes. It is as I said. It was a stupid question—are you okay—stupid. He never spoke. It was me. It was me and this dream and the purple of her blackened face running through the pure blue woods of a photo-shopped picture. In these dreams he is broken. In these days I am broken, and the sun blinds me like the beauty blinds me and I laugh and I talk and behind that laughter and behind that talk is the shrieking laughter and the piercing cries of a lunatic, shut away inside of a box inside of a me.41

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I can’t understand it and I don’t understand him, and I can still see him the last time we really talked when we should have been listening to the bent and broken strains of an out-of-tune last concert. And I can still see him exactly as the last time I saw him, out of the whiteness of the wall, him and his joke of a hello-kitty orchestra folder rescued from the trash. And me not talking and him not talking and the silence and him gone gone gone gone gone. And the strange green creature inside me shrieks anew and I silence her because this writing is the only food that she will be given. I have an English final tomorrow. And I have to study, and she has to go back to the darkness inside of me. It has all turned to darkness, like the watery horror that dripped down on me has soaked and saturated every bit of my being and myself. I cannot be broken, but I am. I am. So. Broken.43

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The final tests of the classes with him are over, and justly so because they nearly killed me. But not so...Because I know nothing. There is nothing. I have nothing but one stupid rumor from today. And I do not believe that, because that would mean an eternal break, and that simply will not happen. It will not happen. Nothing happens that quickly. It is a rumorarumorarumor. No. It has to be.45

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I’m broken.47

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I’m broken and every moment he is there comical and looking at me in that certain way and it breaks me in those places where there was light but where there is now darkness and water. Darkness and water. 49

Darkness. 50

Water. 51

Wisdom.