Here I am, on some midnight, feeling another summer pull itself away. Normally, I’d be drifting to sleep right now. Maybe not even ‘drifting.’ My lovers have sworn I fall asleep in a snap –– we hit the pillow and you were gone –– but not tonight. Tonight my mind is a kitchen sink overflowing, thoughts in amoeba puddles across the linoleum floor:
closure comes years after you stop wanting it.
forgiveness can happen behind unforgiving boundaries.
we outgrow life chapters the way teens outgrow clothes.
Get too close and they bleed together. A larger amoeba now, messier in its boundaries, murkier and deeper at once. (I don’t know shit about amoebas.)
Life’s lessons feel messier this year, harder to untangle and stretch in ribbons across the desk. A younger me would have been eager to sort it all out, find a throughline. An older me will be all knowing wisdom, with his better view.
For now, I’m content to let amoebas be amoebas. Bleeding into each other and crawling themselves through the seasons. (Still no idea.)
–
People don’t always stick around. This is hard, sometimes. Heartbreaking, often. And sometimes it’s good fucking news.
I finished the show Community this week, and I got tearful at the final scene’s notion that sometimes people leave on a boat and never come back. It’s meta, like quite a bit of the show, but it’s honest. Not everyone comes back for more episodes.
One day, they’re written off. Just last week, it seemed they’d be here forever. Now the remaining characters find storylines without them.
I think about the final scenes I’ve shared with people. Sometimes I knew this was it, and other times I held onto hope for another season. Just a bit more, to really give the characters closure.
Just recently, a cameo from somebody I thought would never find their way back into my story. Some people have an energy, a way of recoloring the world around you. We laughed over old memories (and reminded each other of younger days). But the sun rose, and the plane lifted off.
Closure, about five years after I stopped chasing it.
–
Memory can be a jagged thing. It’s like I’ve got a drawer full of glass shards, sharp-edged things I could throw away but I’ve been meaning to find a use for. I lift them out, study them under the light, and cut my fingertips bloody.
Can we ever really throw these things away?
The happier times are there in the drawer, too. Their edges are sharp because they keep company with the brutal times. For every time we lost ourselves to laughter, there’s a time you made me cry on the streets of my favorite city. The night I thought we just might have conversations forever is stacked against the night I reached for you and watched you let me drop.
I don’t want to just hold onto the good times. Without the others, without context, they become a saccharine lie. And I could toss them out, see all the ugly hardship without any of the joy, but that feels sinister and a bit lazy. How can I avoid bruising myself this way again, after all, if I don’t remember the pearls that coaxed me deeper, darker. (I’m mixing metaphors.)
So, if you’re gone, you can know there’s a drawer in some closet beneath my ribcage where I keep the shattered fragments you left behind. I remember your hair in the sun, the way you looked at me when you thought you could love me, and the chill of your goodbyes.
–
Are you okay?
Yes, I’m okay. Writing a feeling down is the closest thing I know to setting it down and letting the wind carry it away. When I write about sad things, I usually feel lighter. Trust me on this.
Who’s/what’s this about?
Good question. It’s about me. I had an ex once express frustration with me for writing I’d done about our time together. He said it was our story, that I shouldn’t share it. I understood, and I disagreed. Writing is my way through. I was working my way to new pages. Same here.
I don’t think that’s how amoebas work.
You’re probably right. Wikipedia is right there, and yet I persisted.
This is a weird one, Michael.
Phew. Agreed.
michael king 