I still see you sitting there,
One leg crossed over the other,
While bowls of light surrender
To the pines that lean forward
Sensing your electric anticipation:
Our reunion of spirits, now restless…
Testing the cosmic interferences
Living deep within your soul.
Sugar Loaf invites me down a portal. I am free to explore the natural world, this secret garden. I carry a four-inch jackknife with a wooden inlay and brass trim, not because I am cautious, but because the knife used to belong to my father. I accept his gift. I know there will be a story and a set of circumstances in accepting it. He is giving me responsibility. I am the boy he will never have. Instead, I am the first born of two girls—the only children he’d have from his two marriages.
I listen to the rules of owning a jackknife: beware of the pointed tip; where to position my fingers when I safely snap the blade shut, and how to keep it protected from rain. My father makes a full circle with his instructions, and repeating his earlier precautions of “jackknife ownership.” The responsibility in owning a jackknife is like that of any other...your own weapon can sharply turn against you. I carry my doll and the jackknife up the mountain, entering the world armed. I live with exceptions, and born into an era where kids could still run and explore without the worries of being abducted or raped.
You’re never alone on a mountain. I am alive from the moment I enter the trail and climb towards a wooded canopy of trees, my belly sharply puffing in and out. I'm alert, like a blue jay, and my senses are quick from excitement; survival tastes of dust I lick from my lips. Most times, the goal is to reach the top of the mountain and locate the sandstone caves. Once I reach the top, I breathe in the panoramic views of Winona. My father has warned me of snakes, rattlesnakes to be exact, and tells me if one crosses my path to be very still. Neither the rattler, nor myself, may see the other coming, so I am to stay out of the caves. But, caves are inviting. I stand at the entrance to a cave as if it were a house with no permission to enter. I toss a rock inside to see if any animals dart out. If I had to, would I kill a snake with my jackknife and bring its limp body dangling over a stick down the mountain? I watch my steps on the path, and speak aloud, hoping to scare off the summer snakes.
I take the downtown exit, park the car, and find shade under a palm tree at the train platform. Will you recognize me? People change. Right now, I'm talking about the outside: Will you notice I don’t have braces, blonde hair, or that now, my hair flirts with black, and has become a wild stream that runs mid-way down my back? I can't help to wonder if we'll let each other in, take the darkness out of our scars. I imagine we'll confess how life has treated us, and stand like children, anxious to make eye contact. I had no idea, a month later, a puzzling distance would metastasize between us, even after we submersed ourselves in a weekend of infinite colors; and me, blinded by the rays of promise under the southern Yosemite Sierra sun.
I divide life into four seasons, the same year I learn to cut out paper hearts. The mountain in front of my house reveals a different personality with each season. I sense its cycle.
Nothing remains the same for long.
I am part of the seasonal pattern, following the beginning, middle, and end. This is what it means to assimilate, not simply to exist. I am learning to navigate on my own. An evolution is occurring: birth, love, and death.
It’s easier to start at the bottom of a heart.
I fold a piece of red construction paper in half and snip my scissors upwards until I have cut one entire side of the heart. The paper scraps will be turned into smaller hearts. Everything must be saved for the sake of making more hearts. Hearts turn best out when there is no pencil outline for my scissors to follow when I cut. I freehand cut hundreds from folded construction papers: the shape is simple. We are the ones who complicate things: Beauty relies on any artist to be patient.
After I finish cutting, I open my heart and smooth out the seam that runs down the center. It will be the first of many seams I try and smooth out. Little do I know, I will grow up, fall in love several times, face the un-repairable creases, some more evident in some than others, and there will be nothing I can do to make them disappear.
I offer handfuls of hearts to my mother and father, some end up in drawers or become lost in the daily shuffle, while some make it to the refrigerator—fanning starlets, pinned with a letter from my alphabet magnet set. This is love.
My mother, blonde and bent,
cleans the garage, not even a year
after your death. She pulls on the miles
of dive equipment, cracked and black
hoses baked from deadpan heat.
Reminiscent of the years
they had lived underwater,
now piles of oxygen-starved heaps:
She continues late past summer,
counts three falling stars before bed,
dreams in metal, as wind chimes
sing out low from the east.
The sunrise will be sure to come,
stretch her body
across the half empty house.
Hours pass, hard as quartz,
pushing holes in the sky, and then,
she finds his dive slate, writing still legible;
it says, what you see are fish eggs.
Little sacs of life, the size of hope,
living inside their universe,
legs--all in oceanic unison, and
ghost-like as they emerge,
rising and falling
into each other's arms
deep inside the salt of the earth.
Clusters of desire, red as rubies, have the authority to cast shadows and
blur the bouquets, perfected visions, when we hold them too close to our eye.
