The man looks at me, chuckles and says ‘you must be The Other Husband’ but doesn’t hear me say ‘yeah and I am walking with The Other Wife’ or if he does chooses to ignore it.
After a day that saw my BP spike to 298/87 it is impossible for me to be any sillier or any more serious. I am spent and only standing because of force of will.
It feels like the time someone strapped a refrigerator to my back and said to start walking. I am not built for grace, but if you need brute strength and a fool to wield than I am your man.
The freight train has left the station and the engineer has it moving at full speed it will without question jump the tracks but I haven’t figured out yet if I will try to jump or see what happens if I wait for the crash.
That is because a smell that had long since been forgotten is stuck in my nostrils and the embers of that fire are burning bright. I welcome it all because I recognize so much of it comes from having felt stifled and unable to communicate.
Now the words come flowing out in rapid fire as does the anger, but the focus of the anger isn’t upon anyone or anything else but me. I see some things with the sort of clarity that illuminates the changes people must make.
Not because they want to, but because they have to.
We tip our bottles back and speak, “I understand you Pablo. They’ll read this and assume it has to be in reference to someone and I’ll say yeah it might. But I’ll add it is in reference to an idea too.”
When they press for confirmation about which definition is which I’ll simply smile and say all we want is for a partner to hear us, to acknowledge our existence and perhaps say they accept all of us.”
Pablo will ask if I have ever been in such a state and I’ll I say have but that train left the station and no one knows if it will hit it again.
Sometimes the people say they need to know what spurs ideas and what pushes a person to try to become a poet. Is it pain? Is it sorrow? Is it joy?
I have answers and I have questions.
****
The roar of the silence comes in waves that hammer my body and try to knock it from its feet. I smile because again this is something I am particularly skilled at.
I know how to plant my feet and stand my ground.
Memories of the bigger boys in the neighborhood trying to push me down and or pull me over things to trip me flow forward.
I learned how to hold myself in place and how to move forward so my knees would strike those kneeling in the head or ribs. Sometimes they would yell and tell me I asked too many questions and or asked too much.
All these years later I yell back at them I shall not be guilty of dishonest honesty. I shall name what I feel and what I see and if it is too much 0r too hard for others they may go.
There are lots who already have and there is limited room on this island.
When the dizziness returns I recognize it comes after trying to puzzle 0ut how to fix a problem I didn’t create and shouldn’t own. But life doesn’t ask if you are responsible for what you get to deal with, it simply gives it to you.
The girl who will graduate with the class of 2022 asks a bunch of questions and laughs at most of my responses. It doesn’t always go this way, not in her teenage years.
Not so long ago I could do no wrong and she would lock her arms around my neck and ask me to hug her or carry her around.
Today that rarely happens. It is a natural progression but sometimes I miss the really little girl.
She tells me about a debacle with a substitute bus driver and the conversation veers into talk about the future. It is a funny and strange coincidence, because earlier I had told someone else that you can’t plan for the future with the kind of clarity one wants.
You don’t know what you get or what you want. Don’t know where you will be or where you won’t.
But some things you can make plans to do. Some changes can be anticipated and somewhere after that graduation there will be others.
For now we ride the train, try to be present and enjoy the scenery. We take the confirmation of certain beliefs and accept what is told at face value and listen to the whistle as we approach the curve.
That clickety-clack of the wheels is strangely hypnotic and it is impossible not to believe some pretty amazing things are coming, all you have to do is hug the world and let it hug you back.
