Preface

Coffee and laughter at our café in town. As we drove back to the house, the journey had been a dark and silent kind of ride that cherished the absence of words, lit by the energy of things unsaid.

He rolled the windows down as we drove over the gravel road, through acres of dew-scented meadows. I breathed in deeply and let my heavy eyelids droop as I turned to look at his face.

It was too dark to see each other, really. But I could still see the way he had looked at me over our cappuccinos: with that sexy gleam that made me feel like I couldn’t say anything. Or more aptly, like I wanted to scream something so profound that the words hadn't been invented yet.

When we first met, that look had made me want things that I barely even knew how to want. Even now, years later, he couldn’t know what it did to me. From the shadows of the car, he felt me look at him and his warm hand moved to cover mine.

We reached the end of the country drive. Now the engine was off. Crickets, night music, and warm air.

We sat there for several moments with unbuckled seat belts, saying nothing.

He leaned over to rest his lips against my forehead and I breathed in his familiar sun and earth scent.

I pressed my lips to his with feather-lightness. Home.

…..

It was a simple evening of simple pleasures, and we had experienced many like it. But that night was different because none have followed since.

Perhaps because of this, those are the moments my mind has taken and wrapped so carefully for my dream-self to live over and over again. When I wake up to find them vanished and empty, I feel like I can’t breathe, like all the air has sucked through the gaping hole in my chest and abdomen.

We were happy. For so long we were happy. But maybe I always knew that so much of a good thing wasn’t fair in a suffering world.

That morning, when I woke up next to him, he was changed. His arms were familiar, and his face, and the rest of him, but it was not him.

He jumped up out of bed, and looked at me with the eyes of a stranger. I scurried out quickly after him, twisted in the sheets and feeling panicked. I grabbed his hand, but the way he tensed at my touch told me that if he could remember the night before he may have recognized my hand as the hand that held the coffee mug across from him, but that was all.

He did not know it to be the hand that had held his countless times, that had placed the wedding band on his finger, not even as the hand that had been burned by the stove two weeks ago when I made us chocolate chip cookies.

He looked at my hand, and he looked at my face, and the panic in his eyes told me what would happen in the next moment. His legs were longer than mine, and he was faster. Of course, I bolted after him.

I couldn’t help but glance in the mirror in the hallway as I ran past it. Had I turned into a monster overnight? But no, I was just typical flushed and messy-haired morning me.

“Aidan!” I cried after him as we raced down the stairs of the old country house. He looked back at me with an expression that I have never seen him wear. He was a terrified child, and the distress written on his face nearly broke my heart.

As his hand pulled the door open the light outside almost blinded me. The door closed behind him, and I opened it two seconds later.

Then he was really and truly and totally gone.

Seaside Hospice

When you go to take him in

embracing with your living limbs,

you will feel a rush of cool. No ice, not rough,

just shadowed quiet: the smooth, dark surface

of a stone. You’ll look into those pond-gray eyes,

dimly reflecting what he sees. Or smell the stale rot

of his breath, swelling in and out of teeth. You’ll listen to

the drained- dry voice. And maybe, fearing all these things,

you’ll pull away to wrestle with each knot that’s tied

between the years, you two. Everything that once

was woven. But maybe, before you are set free, you’ll look

and notice the tattooed years of folded flesh

he wears. They are like a proclamation: “This was me.”

And now he offers what he has: a map of charted courses.

Cafe Holiday (or a fluffy poem about candy based on an earlier entry)

The crusty cube is covered white with flakes A prickly, sweet and loosened coat which falls In pieces: messy, pale against dark wood. Biting in, taste buds find a very new And gooey sort of treat. Inside, The flavor’s nutty, amber-colored, rich. It makes me think of winter days when school Is out and kids escape to play in snow. Returning home at dusk, happy and cold, They peel off layers. Warmth is what they find, And dinner: day well-lived. But snowy-days End like café candy, melting away. One piece of hazelnut Turkish delight Can’t write a thesis, make decisions, fix An aching heart. Too much will only make You sick or poor or fat. But ten minutes Ago there was no end: now there has been.

Pancakes

Sunday morning pancake breakfast has long been a tradition for Johnson & sons. Long ago, Mama served them up hot from the skillet, poured over with thick and amber maple. For years and years they would sit at the small blue table in the kitchen and eat hurridly before the early service at First Baptist church, before hide and seek in the Fellowship Hall, and before Papa planned out what he would build, for who, that week. Now, if it's Sunday, you can walk between the aisles of booths at the MacDonalds in Meridian, Mississippi and see them sitting there. 11 o'clock and father and son are eating their thawed-out pancakes, slowly. They don't talk much and they don't seem to really notice what they're eating. They remember Mama's pancakes instead. The smell of hot oil unfreezing potatoes is fused with the odor of disinfectant spray that wets the plastic seats. Junior sits big and tall, his BP baseball hat almost hiding the sharp, watchful eyes that never leave his father. Senior sits across the booth, small and wrinkled in a faded pair of overalls. One strap has slipped off his shoulder. Neither notices.

So drained from aching, clutching, missing, a black and holy sense of gone. And waiting for sense of finding: of joy and longing to belong, Is trying to catch something like the sun while sitting in it all along. How does the empty not consume? How does the full not stretch apart? So full of dark and light and wonder, When will the ending seem to start?

The crusty cube is covered white with flakes.
It’s prickly, sweet and crumbling coat now falls
In small and messy pieces. Soon, as teeth
Encounter what’s inside, the tongue will find
A new and very gooey sort of treat:
An amber-colored, rich and nutty taste.
It makes me think of kids who played in snow
All day. Returning home, they were so cold.
They came inside and peeled off layers. Warmth
Is what they found, and dinner: a day well-lived.

I've never had Turkish Delight anywhere like I had at Pasha's one night. In fact, I'm not even sure that it can be called Turkish Delight, legitmitately. But it certainly did taste delightful.