Way up high in the maple tree
so my brothers couldn’t see
I carved our initials
B.H.
+
R.B.
It was 5th grade & true love.
You loved me back until you
held hidden hands with Tina
under the lunch room table.
Then came Debbie, Sandy, Rebecca
and Tiffany too.
2Good
2B
4gotten
Blindly running with that torch
12th grade year
your Trans Am helped the cause.
Slid into the seat
with ease after school.
Senior Trip
you smacked my face
by bedding BFF
Malorie.
Your eulogy was difficult to write
looking for a balance to honor you
and paint you as you were for the one’s who knew.
Like the code word uttered when it is time to leave a party
without being obvious
“pineapple”.
It was agonizing to deliver to a room of people I didn’t know
I didn’t know you
and you me.
Doing my best to speak intelligently with the best suit I could afford
maybe in the end others might be your surrogate of feelings
and be proud for you as your son stands alone.
Maybe I should have used a safe word
to let you know that the neglect from earliest memories
was impossible to bear,
but that is the very nature of not noticing
“Please”.
Your battle lasted for too many pain filled years and I had thought the multiple weekend flights to try and connect might make us closer,
but in the end my resentment out lasted you.
What I should have given you before asking for explanations that ended in excuses
“forgiveness”.
moving pictures,
only an approximation,
a trick
to distract from
the only thing
souls can do
move
there isn’t a blueprint
for this sort of thing
some have called me
a good man
I’m sure as sure
that I’m not even
close
more like an apple
that’s been lying
on the ground
a little too long
I drive
With the windows
Half down
The sunset over the bridge
A few stray hairs
Covering my face.
The peaceful music
Up loud.
And I think about how lately,
It feels as though
There are boulders
Sitting on my shoulders
And how it feels like
No matter how many times I try
I can’t catch a break.
But I park and rest my head
On my steering wheel
And I think about how far I’ve come
And how I’ve beat this every time.
I try to build the idea
Of something more
Or a reason why.
The sky fades to black
And the warm becomes chilly.
I grasp onto hope and growth
Like a cozy jacket in my passenger seat.
It’s okay not to want me that way,
but just say,
so I don’t weigh out wasted time
to mark us by,
I want to measure each other
by our joy of thunderstorms,
and the electricity
that ripples in bolts between us.
I remember looking at
Oklahoma on the big
US map in the library –
the map that spanned
the wall. It made the
distance from home
to there look enormous.
I felt a rush of excitement
each time I looked at the
route – the vast stretch of
interstate between
Morehead and Stillwater –
alongside my fear, and
somehow deep within,
I knew everything would
work; that I was on the
brink of my greatest
adventure.
What would Divine say?
Hooray for malice!
Eat flith. Dive through
the haze, sleek as trapeze
artists’ plummet to net.
Dismount. Begin again. Dismissed.
