Sunday, March 2, 2014

It is from here now that I plan our life.

I lay on your side of the bed while you dance at your cousin's wedding in Florida. Tomorrow night, your family will celebrate 90 years of life for your grandfather. I'll be here in Chicago eating bananas and grapefruit, doing school work and applying for a job far from here. It snowed more today. I walked the dog in timid, apologetic snowflakes as they fell into the lumps of my knit scarf. I didn't curse the clouds, but kept my head down as I trudged over hidden ice, slush and dog shit.      

I found a house online to buy, a little yellow one. Remember that other tiny house I wanted years ago? The one with the slanting floor? Remember how we drove there and stood on squishy grass to look into the windows? I signed up for real-estate email updates. I tell you over the phone. This house was sent to me today because there was a reduction in the price this week, the same week as I'm applying for this job. Coincidence? 

You sit barefoot by the hotel swimming pool listening to my babble.  

Here in our generic urban apartment I have, like a prisoner in a cement cell, taped paper pictures from magazines, poetry pages, postcards, photographs and wedding invitations onto the white walls as if to transplant us while simultaneously cradling us in color and encouragement. It is from here now that I plan our life. I hope you don't mind. I dream of have a compost bin, a vegetable garden and a driveway. I wrote a long letter to my dream job. Then I calculated a mortgage and downpayment. I'm getting ahead of myself. I have the tendency to do that. Hope and I have a lot of fun. You're quiet. I pause. I'm embarrassed, but say how I believe everything happens for a reason. I don't know, I just believe that we're all connected with these divine moments that lead us through our lives. I don't know.   

Stop saying, I don't know. You tell me. Then you define divinity.  You say how you believe all humans are connected, but you wouldn't call it divine because divine is about something separate from humanity. It's specifically not human. 

Oh. Well, I believe that's God. That that's divine.   

On the table beside the bed, your comic books are stacked with colors like candy wrappers. My plastic glasses, flip phone and current issue of The Sun Magazine sit there too like an old man in a gray fuzzy sweater beside a teenage skateboarder on the bus. You won't read my magazines about social injustices, blue collar hardships or obscure catastrophes, just as I won't read about Spiderman scaling city walls to save a stack of pizza. And that's ok. Diversity is good. 

I no longer want to try and convert anyone to my church of fruit and vegetables. This is my culture after all and Lord knows we don't need another crusade. For you, I'll try not to speak of dead baby cows whenever you mention having cheese with your supper. I promise.  

I fear if I get this job far from here, you and your local friends will talk trash about me behind my back, which is treacherous to say because you love me entirely, my ideas included. Still I'm afraid someone might think that I am the ruiner of your life. That I'm selfish and blinded by my greed for green leaved trees, mountain dirt and farm stands. 

Were my friends mad at you when we left Boston? You ask. 

No. I don't think so. 

It's so late and my hands are dry and stiff from typing and folding laundry. I'm hungry but I don't want to eat. Slightly thirsty, but I don't want to drink. All I want is sleep. Is this why I go to bed so late when you aren't here? So that I want sleep even more than I want you beside me? So that I don't stay awake feeling alone and small in our queen size bed? Perhaps. 

Good night my dear. 

A Wise Friend

A wise friend is akin to a book of old wisdom.  A book of bone and soul and skin. A book that breathes and speaks and eats. A book with a so...