Open Letter to a Lost Love

Space, the final frontier, between us –

An abyss of falling stars, with wishes

Unbidden and ungranted. Our tongues hiss

At the hurt, shapeless and undefined,

Like the nucleus in an amoeba of sorrow.

Love shouldn’t have to hurt so hard, so

What was that thing that broke our hearts,

Ripe with passion and charm, joy and pleasure,

The smoldering embers of a matchstick

Next to an old gas stove with a failed pilot light –

Waiting to explode? And then like fools,

We would attempt to rebuild the sepia-toned nostalgia

Paying no heed to the reality of jagged edges

That cast this saga into tomes of memory…

Yet fondly now, here I sit, missing what was good,

When the alchemy of our elixir bubbled and churned

Into something sweet, and lovely, and desirable.

Alas, the universe still expands – never contracts –

And we are hurtling headlong, in different directions.

But I think of you, and I savor the pain,

Despite knowing that there shall be no return,

Because of all the ports of call along my journey,

You were one who made me better, and

For that I am grateful.

Describing Myself in Three Words

It was November 15, 2018 when the instructions were given; Describe yourself in three words.

Of course, I chose to comply...

There are three giant words standing in a triangle at the middle of a town square. Concrete slabs extend fifty feet in every direction. I am standing in the center of the words. My brow is furrowed. I am wondering who put the words here, and why. 

With my right hand I reach up to scratch my forehead, but at first touch my hand flattens and slides backwards over my close-cropped hair. It was long once, undulating over my shoulders like a waterfall in the night. Now it looks more like a thatch roof after a wind storm, flecks of snow sticking to the side walls.

The white letters of the words are reversed from my perspective. I turn clockwise to examine them. Two of the words have three letters, while the other has four. 

The letters are taller than me, maybe ten feet high. They are all capital letters and all the same height. If I stretch, I can reach the inner underside of the arc of a letter "O."

It's late in the afternoon. Yesterday I was at work, but today is my day off so I didn't bother shaving this morning. The sun is bright, and I have been outside all day. Most people think my eyes are brown, but when I get a lot of sun, if you look closely, you can see that they sometimes turn a greenish yellow. In college it was sometimes more of a yellowish green, but that's all I'll say about that. 

I'm wearing a flannel shirt with a checkered pattern of medium to dark grayish orange. The top three buttons are open, revealing a red t-shirt with a frayed neckline. An ink and sepia image is emblazoned across the chest. An oval of flowers frames a surfer riding a cresting wave. I've never surfed but I like the spirit of the image. 

The shirts drape over my waistline, concealing the forest image edged on my belt and my late father's eagle belt buckle, which together hold up my loose-fitting Levi 565 relaxed fit jeans. On my feet I'm wearing mesh grey Sketchers. 

As I spin, I make mental notes of the letters and how they fit together. I stop spinning. The word to my left has the reverse letters; U-O-Y. The word to my right also has the reverse letters; E-R-A. In front of me is the reverse four-letter word; E-R-E-H.

As I peer beyond the letters, I realize that the concrete slabs are not gray. They are painted with long parallel black lines, boxes, and rectangles. Different shapes are coded with different colors. There is a color key at the far edge of the slabs, but I cannot make out what it says. 

Clearly, I am standing at the center of a map. I recall a joke my maternal grandfather used to make; "Wherever you go, there you are."

Indeed grandpa. Indeed.