On Sunday all these ordinary things happen. There is an ancient symbol drawn on a napkin. The cook in the kitchen gives you a full account of its historic detail. You have a thousand hieroglyphics that you’ve made purposely difficult so that they are too hard for the rest of the world to figure out.
You used to know this girl who drew all these crooked birds. She can not do this anymore. She will only adhere to the straight and narrow. She said to you one day, I am a bird clinging to this branch, it is as if I’ve forgotten how to fly, it is as if I can not let go.
You once knew this girl who kept saying she was going to go. You would say goodbye over & over never knowing if it would be the next one or the last. Moving all the islands of your heart is like death, she said. You must restart & therefore fresh. If you can imagine your heart as an island, with each ventricle like a tiny bridge to the rest of your soul, then you will understand that of course, each heartbeat is like a tremor, a sort of moving along across the fault lines. Sometimes your heart aches so much that the island separates, far far from the rest of you that you realize you’ve lost some of your parts.
At four am you rise early, you have been searching for an asper tree for so long. You will find many palms this spring, she said, but never an asper. It will be a great while before you find your asper, but when you do you will know. You will lay low, rest assured, lay low and rest. She was a prophet, this girl you once knew.
***
Over the weekend you found yourself searching again. At midnight on Saturday you went to a large art gathering alone. To your surprise there were hundreds of other people there, milling about. The booths were all raised to eye level so all you could see if you looked underneath were hundreds of pairs of legs in radically different shapes. You kept looking for skinny ankles that you found familiar, and it was like that song you once heard, when you get so excited but it becomes nothing, nothing at all.
You begin giving things away. It is like you are dying sort of. It is like you are telling someone, remember me please, remember me, I will never forget you graceful friend.
You are making lists of everything you have to give. To one, an old mortar & pestle, another, a rusted saw. A broken pearl ring. An old 45. Breakfast without sweets.
On Sunday nights you like most to reminisce. Once this girl you once knew told you about how she once held a small candle in the center of her palm all night. How it illuminated everything. Light. In itself. Even the blind can see light behind their eyes. When you close them, all the little spots of particle. All the spots of time. How she held the candle all night until just the flame remained, burning her skin. When she felt the pain she only winced, did not blow out the flame, just let the fire remain until it dwindled, then went out. How she exclaimed suddenly, I do not know anymore who I can trust! Because you know one day you were just conceived, with no permission at all.
You are eating grapes again. Fruit before bed rots the stomach. The pale skin of an old man, how under his eyes his skin droops like a weary soldier; how he squints with everything he’s seen; skin of an old man, withered like grapes, we are always ripe with beauty or grace.
You are jumping forty years into the future: light reflects off this woman’s snow white hair, she is a girl you once knew, love the image like a still life photograph, but eat the grape slowly, pulling the skin off first in strips between your two front teeth.
***
You are in the canal way. You love Mondays because you have all day to just walk and walk forever, in circles. You sneak to the canal and stare blissfully at rusted pipes and a narrow path of algae. You try to write, but mostly you just sit, sometimes you smoke cigarettes. You lie to yourself often and say you will stop, you will stop. You have an illness in this way, you can’t ever seem to stop yourself from anything, and it gets you in trouble, you become terminally ill from all the things you can never seem to stop. You act irrationally and full of heart and its like a racehorse has taken off and you can not control it. In the canal way sometimes you wish a stranger would find you and talk with you for a minute or two. You hope they will shout and sing, you will say, hello stranger, I’m so glad to have someone to talk with today.
You think a lot about the contamination in the canal. The green algae river is so tiny you can leap across it. Once you missed and jumped right in, you were covered in algae, your toes were dancing in these algae fronds and you were not disgusted, only apathetic. You no longer fear chemicals, you know that someday too you shall perish, and this is okay. You fear only the holes, another person leaving. You fear the holes so much, it seems so normal now. Your mother calls you at the canal, there is a telephone attached to a tree, you answer, and of course you hear what has become normal, another person you love is sick. You sigh, you say okay, we suffer so much for our love. You think that if you could just stop loving everyone it wouldn’t always hurt so much, but you can not, and you think of all the tiny black butterflies in your lungs, you have folded them inside there, you light a cigarette and you sigh, tiny black specks like origami wings wilting in a cage.
***
Tuesday mornings can be difficult. Strive to roll out of bed & understand why you are getting up to do Some Particular Thing. Strive to become yourself again. One more dollar & you’re going home. Dollar is folded into an origami swan & then, it is gone, like it never was at all.
Tuesday night & your alone tonight, you love the quiet alone, learning how to make the self a home. Clean the dust off your plants & commence with the quiet love that becomes you. You are singing about Jesus. You still ain’t got him, nor care for him, but as this girl once said, I will know my savior when I come to him & you commence.
Once on the eve of a new year, you commenced through the city with three beautiful people. They were your very best friends. When you turned upside down you could see the city right side up reflection on the river. There were barrels of fire on each street corner to warm the withered hands. We’re weary of winter, the people shouted into the flames & commenced.
Once on the eve of a new year, you went to visit the birds. They were pink & becoming. You told someone you missed them. You passed time, took a walk to the music pawn shop, stopped to visit the geese by the river. They told you to follow but you cried, how can I fly with only paper wings? You fold the day into an origami swan; you send it off into the river, as if it never was at all.
***
Once there was a winter in which you cried a great deal. Once there was a winter when your family filled itself with holes. You said, we are stardust, once to your uncle while smoking with him on the porch. Your eyes were almond wide & you could see the moon full & within him. The next week his cheeks were gaunt & you were feeding him a banana popsicle. You had never seen anything so bare bones. Try looking directly into a pair of eyes that know they will soon not see.
He could not walk but tried so hard. Still had his pride. He refused everyone until the last moments. You had a premonition & you knew. You showed up on the patio and it was as if it never was at all.
After it was like it never was at all, the three of us stood as if we’d become air; this kind of silence is the wave of shock before the tears. Aunt stared out the window. Grandmother walked into the room. It was cold but the sun poured in through the windows upon his skin; we can not warm ourselves back to life but we can love every small patch of light. You were uncertain, the sun was lulling. You could feel your breath shallow like a wind song. You were unsure, you could not say a word. You kissed the grandmother’s cheek & when she began to cry uncontrollably you cupped her hands, folded each one like an origami swan & sent them away down the falling trails of her cheeks.
When your mother arrived you could feel the women tumbling toward each other like a tower wanting to crash but unable, because like marble pillars, you were each holding the others up. Words between the lines of age. The eyes spoke, women’s eyes. No mother should have to loose a child but she had & many do. Women’s eyes. This kind of eye is beyond comprehension.
When they arrived to take the body, the three of you had to walk away. Grandmother, mother, & you. You were hand in hand and your bodies created a line in the horizon of sidewalk. To love a love is to give a love. The grandmother was in the middle. You turned & you could see your mother’s hand coiled within hers like a rolled tree. Slow steps in the distance. You could see a silo & the Allegheny River. The river where you received a good deal of happiness. You smiled at memories & thought of lovers, smiled soft. Grandmother gripped your hand tighter. You were staring at the silo as if it were just another thing in a forest of trees. All you remember now is that silo, its white point, your steeple. You blessed the sky & it was as if it never was, clouds like billowed origami swans floating in a paper thin atmosphere.
To give a love is to live a love; you felt that then, love hanging like Spanish moss on a thread. When will I see you again? You can ask this of everyone you once knew. On Monday you said you missed someone. Today, the pen you once received as a gift stopped writing. It was a dead standstill. The words rose early & tried is where it stopped. You had been trying to write yourself another story. Sometimes you like to make them up. Replace a new story with an old one. Pretend you are not quite as dramatic or insane as you once thought. You’re thinking you’re ready for the country, cause its time to go, and really, you hate people anyway. You feel most comfortable in a field. You are filled with water, but you are in love with fire. You want to know hats & skinny ankles, cut off shorts & mud, learning how to fish, how to breathe Really Fresh Air. How to be because in a field there is only you & the air. There is a clearing around you, no paths to have to choose. Everything would be completely clear.
***
Every time you are in a new place you look at things harder. Crooked bird, crooked head. A cat with a question mark tail. You say Savannah is the type of name I would name my child, if I ever had one. A thousand wild ponies on an island usually remain there, and are happy while grazing. Is the Spanish moss weeping? A question you ask in the weeks following. On the girl’s bathroom wall the saddest stories are always written. You write your secrets there, like a child does, in this pocket in the corner of the country, and walk away.
***
You are desperately in love with everything and nothing at once. On Wednesdays you usually see the most beautiful things, flowers like dancing women with their skirts blowing open, tiny plots of dirt filled with lettuce and kale, wild grass in a basket. On Wednesdays you are teaching a child named Summer. She is charming with her long black hair. She draws you tiny pictures of birds, rips them into little crinkled bits and holds them in her palm and tells you the palm is a cave, the palm is a home, and you carry them like that there in the lines of your hand. You have ten birds now, one for every Wednesday you’ve seen her, this little girl. You fold each one into an origami swan the size of your fingertip, balancing each one at the end of your fingerprint before you let them sail away.
***
Once a long time ago an owl landed on your fence. Don’t ever let anyone tell you your not beautiful. Oh, it landed there and stood awhile and then it flew. We got so lost said this girl you once knew.
***
Thursdays are full like the moon, and always full of the magical ones. You like Thursdays most, Thursdays are always a little batty. You walk the streets you know and you meet the people you already know. You meet a man named Victor, he is one of the most profound men you’ve ever met. In this part of town, Victor is infamous. You don’t think he has any idea you already know all about him when you meet him. His face is tattooed on the arms of many young people. People throw around all these big words like schizophrenia as if that is crazy. You are pretty sure you yourself are crazy, and you would diagnose yourself with everything if you could. Madness breeds liking, and you always liked a little character anyway.
Victor tells you stories about the funny farm, how this nurse was in love with him but treated him like shit because he wouldn’t sleep with her. He says, really, I woke up and she was beating my broken wrist with a metal prod. He tells you about being homeless and how an Indian man fed him food and cigarettes every day for an entire year, how people are usually very kind if you look them in the eye with respect. He lights a cigarette and says, oh, I remember you now, you smiled and said hello to me one day when I was walking past the shop. He says, it’s nice when someone says hello to you, it makes your day. Victor can smoke three packs of cigarettes in one day. It is no problem he says, really, it helps me breathe, he says. He tells you about his friend who will get your book of prose published. Its no problem he says, really, just tell him you know Victor. You imagine him like a bright lightning bolt trickling out of the sun someday.
Later you are walking down the street and there is an old woman with her dog. She stops at the shop and asks for a cup of water in exchange for a penny. They bring her water in a bowl. She is carrying on in this old woman exclamatory kind of way, talking about how she was walking and “the dog started layin down n’ all as if it were dead.” She kept trying to get the dog to drink the water out of the bowl, shoving his face into it, nose covered with water, as he sneezes and shakes it off. She just kept repeating it over and over: “I don’t understand, he just started layin down like he was dyin ‘n at.” Suddenly it started to rain, out of nowhere. Everyone stopped for a minute confused. There had been sunshine only a moment ago and now it was beginning to pour buckets of rain, out of nowhere. Out of the corner of your eye you see the dog, tongue hanging out as he played games with the rain, catching small droplets over and over with his tongue, like a tiny child playing in the snow. You stand there for a minute, grab your notebook and write something about freedom, folding it into an origami swan and send it down the sewer way.
***
On Friday the first thing you do is read your horoscope. It tells you to sing to your seeds to help them rise. You begin planting basil and sunflowers everywhere, you have never sung to anything except yourself before; you have refused to. You begin singing loudly, obnoxiously, for hours, and they begin to grow, by the next day they are like gigantic vines, and you are living in a jungle of growth. You have been singing to them for weeks now. A few origami swans linger through the living room, taking a nap in the afternoon sun, and then commence. You are in love with all these strange roots. You are taking every piece of paper you can find; old receipts, bills, letters from friends, newspapers, free address labels that recently came in the mail and you use them to make origami butterflies for every thing you have ever loved. They are romping about, they are whole. You open the window and let them go. There was once this girl you knew who told you that for every color is a corresponding parallel hue. Once when you were thinking really hard you looked up and there was a rainbow right there in your room.