Finally, we decide
that the loneliest world is the one
where words exist. Every letter has to compensate
for something transient and unforgiveable. When
I was a child, I caught my father staring at me
early in the morning, his expression an
exclamation of missed chances. And did you
see the long, delicious wink that
stranger gave you? The one pure
language is what we say out loud in our
sleep. There lies the reality
of all these silent spaces. Once, I said, god
can only exist on a blank page. Everything written
ceases to be a miracle, stops being
a secret. The heart breaks at the sound
of a leaf falling and all I am allowed
to say is wrapped in the atonement of someone else's bewildered
cry: Look! The sun!

The Hour

On the last day of that school year, our English teacher
told us that the theme of the hour was love lost. Judging
from the punctuated groans, you could tell that we wanted
none of that. She begins by drawing
a figure of a woman on the used board. This is
Anna on the tracks, she says, and tells us about fear and how the body
refuses it when it already recognizes when things are too late. She
erases that picture and replaces it with a stick figure and instructs
us to say hello to Humbert, who is chasing after a girl sporting
pigtails and the pigtails turn into white doves, their feathers
flattened under the weight of all that grief. Then comes Oliver
and that infamous line: Love is
never having to say you are sorry. Finally,
we catch on and one of us, a girl in a red skirt,
raises her hand and asks,
Why is the objective of love loss? The teacher
looks out the window; we see the
years falling away from her face, she has never
looked any younger than this. Then a year passes and she says
Because all we want is to want. Anything more
than that is a lie; anything less
lies to waste. She shields her eyes and she pulls down the blinds. It's
a wonder to me even now, how we managed
to sit there, looking at each other
illuminated in that new darkness, hoping
that the final bell would ring
soon enough. And when it did, our bodies rushed out,
leaving the longest hour of our lives in that dark room
with her.

What I Would Have Missed Had I Died Today

And I think nothing much, except for, maybe, my father leaning on a wall (his favorite) holding an empty ceramic cup, (not his favorite) the one with small pink flowers lining the curve of the handle. Maybe I would have missed the distance he traveled everyday from his past to the present; I know this is what he does because the empty cup is a signal for me to stop and not exist, because these minutes are all he has and he doesn't want me in them. So it is you, he said when he turned around finally to face me.

I would have not seen my mother walking down an anonymous street without noticing me. She does not say hello because she is dead and the dead no longer know the living, or which heart they once occupied.

I am certain that I would also have missed that lone bird's journey across a sky that has gone weak with worry for those walking under it.

I would have missed the slow, dry wind and the door creaking open with a message: come out and see how much every flower loves you.

I would have walked past my life without seeing you for the first time. You looked me in the eyes and said: I am never lonely. I believed you and I wanted so much to put my hand on your lap but I didn't because moments, sometimes, exclude us. Even the most honest ones exclude us. It exists for itself; it's selfish that way.

I would have missed that terrible meal I had for lunch: a dead fish staring at me with its one good eye, it's mouth an O that was a balloon flying off to a happier, more consistent alternative.

I would have missed complaining to anyone who would listen how unsatisfied my body is with living.

I would have missed taking my glasses off, then seeing a world where everything is color without form, and therefore, without strife.

I would have missed asking you how you feel, do feel better, do you love me now? I would have missed saying: I am the name from where few return; the name you put between all these self-imposed distances.

I would have missed how my heart caved in, seeing the last green leaf buried inconspicuously in the pavement. I would have missed remembering that under all this hardness is a life that will continue long after I cease to be.

I would have missed the sad sigh of a dream that I remembered suddenly while talking to a strange boy who said he'd like to swim naked in the groove of my mouth.

I would have missed waking up to a dream where I was a potato and someone's hand was carving a smile into my brown blank face.

I would have missed the news about the girl who has gone missing for 54 days.

I would have missed saying the first prayer I've said in over a decade. The last time I said God's name was when I was 12 and a faraway volcano erupted that night and the next morning, there was snow on the rooftops for the very first time.

I would have missed my brother say, Today, I have a test and I did not study for it. I would have missed forgiving him, silently, for being the weight that I never could carry wholly.

I would have missed knowing the road home and how lonely I felt walking it.

I would have missed the sound of the sea in the wind saying forgive, let go, believe.

Talking About It

Most often than not, our get-togethers
conclude with talk of how we would each prefer
to die. One is almost certain that she would die by fire,
another a car accident, still another the big C, which
isn't that big anymore, we tell her. We shout our suppositions
at each other, explaining why ours is the best exit. Out
to impress, I tell them
that at the end of my life, I believe I will see a man standing, uncertain
at first, in my living room in the
dark, holding a gun in his right hand. He would ask me a
question that I would not know how to answer and my
ignorance compels him to shoot me.
My friends give an almost silent purr of approval. How romantic, they
say, as if this kind of end is worth seeing through. We sit quietly
for awhile, each lost in our private fears.
If this was a night for honesty, we would
tell each other how we suspect each of us would go. None
of those endings would include a death in October, or a man,
or a conversation, even. No one has the heart to
speak the truth when everyone is having such a good time.
The band launches into its last song and we know it as well as we know
what we'd all wear to our funerals. I let out a low sob at the exact time
the music ends and that lone sound extends in the night air, making
my friends laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

on reading a poem

It isn't true what they say
that the setting must matter, neither
the day. To be honest, a poem could find me anywhere
and still, I would remain half of myself, reading
it. This morning, on a trip home, I found a poem
crumpled up next to the seat I occupied.
I had the sense
that the world moved on, had left my body
which drowned headfirst
in the wet bosom of the first lines. I am standing
in the middle of an old living room and I am helping my husband
with his necktie. The words say that I am lonely and
I felt my hands expressing this while they skimmed
over a pattern of wild geese. The writer says that I am waiting for
my husband to leave me. Upon reaching the end, I learned that he will
never return and I know this is true. The person
who has written this never says it, not directly, but
the honesty he left in the
un-telling frightened me. My feet felt
tired all of a sudden, as if they have walked
over every possible body that wants to turn into
something more accurate and sincere.
What I mean to say is, it was so long ago since anyone
pretended that they were in love
with rain. Over a bowl of soup, my father told me
that the true equilibrium of the world is in the center of the heart
of the last person who believes. There is a lie in me that I cannot wait
to whisper in your ear. I want
to say that the last time I went hungry for something
was when I was ten and convinced my classmates
that I had no arms, so that they can teach me
the goodness of letting go. And in their
words was a solace that I could never
match with anything living afterwards.
But the truth is, I have always recognized that self-same confidence
in a good poem: how much it knows you, how expertly its writer can cradle
you in his arms as if you both sprung
from the same kind of love. Try to
imagine what the heart of a poet looks like. Nothing
special, I suppose, save for that strange fullness, that
unmistakable crick that is trying its hardest to define the tilt that leans
slightly toward all our mysterious days.

what i want to become of all this

My aunt tells me that the first English word I uttered
was the word dead. I was three and didn't know
any better. How easy it
was then to say something as trite and irresolute as the word
dead and make someone happy enough to remember
it for the rest of her life. Now I feel the stiff competition for
words, as if everyone else is using up all of mine, what
I am trying my best to say. There is so much I do not
know how to explain or talk about. My father
once asked me to write a story about him after he dies
and I could not imagine how he got the courage
to say something like that out loud. Maybe it was his belief
in that first word and the way I feared it
that convinced him that it would all be true
some day. What I would not give to be able to take a slim collection
of unused words out of my pocket, all saying how much I loved
the living and the man who first asked if the hunger
I was feeling was the kind he could do
something about.

an elderly woman talks about her daughter

The world has lost these pretty young girls.
Their angst has woven a different, more impenetrable
planet around them. They sob and weep about
atrocities that take place in other dimensions of space where
everyone else is a lost mother , a drunken father, a
neglected urchin of chance - versions of monsters under beds,
the dagger in the closet. They no longer know the importance of
mystery, of holding out because everything now
takes place outdoors. I would like to peep under their skirts and
find out if the myth is true -- if down there, there is really nothing
much you can see but a built in boombox, a transistor, and
dozens of blue and red connectors stumbling
all over themselves, pricking their veins that
are seas so blue they look painted on.
Their mouths are always hungry for trophies
of intellect, for disasters then and now,
for vague properties of love. They say words
like "atrophy" or "vindication"as if they were
new weapons that still have the capability to hurt.
But their convictions are different.
They prefer them raw these days so that they’d
be easier on the palate when they swallow
them whole. This fact alone makes me think
less of the weaker ones - the ones who scar easily or
those who consider a bad hair day an opportunity for suicide.
Maybe this is just me, wasting time.
In dreams, I see my younger self,
running with bared teeth, my brown skin
soiled with so much anger. I remember being unafraid.
But now, I ask myself, what was I running against? And for whom?