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we withdrew into the song of a sea shell and the whisper of the
ocean floor offered us its final call.

holding our thoughts like a deep breath we surrendered to the
serenity of the billowing waves.

palm fronds crackled in the wind, deceiving us by playing the
rain in this summer play.

embers rose from the stone pit like dying fireflies caught in the
forever dance of the ocean’s music, lighting the black sand of
our evening stage as they climbed into the threatening sky.

we followed the music up the spiral of the sea shell, twisting
clockwise to the cadence of a million ocean waves at our heads.

on the beach we were discovered in the haze of the rising sun–

it was all captured in time, the beach was our stage,
sunrise was the final curtain call

and we gave the world a sleeping ovation.

I removed the bedsheets, took down the drapes and
replaced them with blinds, rearranged the furniture.

I painted the walls white, ripped up the carpet to
reveal the hardwood floors beneath, scrubbed the
bathtub and shower. All of her things are gone,
     every last little reminder I can find.

And yet, as I walk down the hallway and into each
empty room, I can still smell her skin. Her laughter
     bounces from wall to wall; an echo like torture.
 

I am often caught by my reflection in glass, usually
in a window, and my own face startles me. I’m not
sure what I expect to see there. It is always a
stranger looking back, an old man not unlike my father
     but less like his little boy.

dark and affected, his left side numb from stroke
he stumbles into my room with the smell of tequila

strong on his breath, it seeps from his skin under the
stained shirt he wears over his thick frame, another

night alone in the house with my good ol uncle joe
he stands in my room and demands that I get my

lazy ass up to face him like a man, like a real man
and even though I am four inches taller than he is

there is still something I am expected to prove
here in my own room, which he reminds me is in

his house which he pays for with his bus driver job
so I stand to face him like a man, like a real man

and apparently as a demonstration of his strength
he pushes me back against the wall as hard as he can

which is pretty damn hard, and I stumble and fall
just in time to miss the fist that crashes into the wall

above my head, sending down bits of plaster
like a dry snow falling in the middle of the desert

     It doesn’t take much to fix a laptop computer, if you know how, and if you have the time and energy, and I suppose the experience helps a bit. Maybe even some training. I had all of those things, but my company still wouldn’t let me fix them. Something about the warranty, I was not an authorized technician and I would void the warranty if I opened them up. So when our laptop computers broke down we were required to call the manufacturer for “on-site” service, which meant that some guy with less experience and energy would come out to the office and fix them for us. I fixed all the desktop computers, the servers, the printers, everything else, but I wasn’t allowed to mess with the innards of the delicate laptops. Continue reading “19 Years” »