Memories Come Late at Night
Memories come late at night.
My brother’s sixth birthday
and his crying sounds more like a prayer.
My father is
just back from the pub
and he’s staring in the bathroom mirror
but not looking at his eyes.
He turns the sink on and then off and then on
and I watch his hands shake under the water,
which turns red, like pomegranates, with blood.
I’m done, goddammit,
he says to my brother, I’m done.
Memories come late at night.
It is Christmas and it is raining
but we are pretending that it’s snow.
My grandfather’s hand is scarred and blistered and cut
and it is pulling me in to the cemetery
where, one day, he will go.
These are my parents, he smiles and then
lays blue flowers on his mother’s stone,
and, because the rain is pouring down,
the flowers begin to wilt, just like his eyes.
I haven’t been here in so long,
he says, so very long.
Memories come late at night.
Summertime
and the air is filled with sun-kissed skies
and dandelion weeds and butterflies
and gentle things that float
in the warm honey breeze.
Your lips are soft and I’m kissing you
where the stars fall and hold the nighttime sea,
where the sky pours out, across our backs,
and lingers along the surface of the bubbling water.
I’ll never forget this,
I whisper to the moon, never.
Memories come late at night.
June, years and years later,
and I cannot sleep.
Sinking
I am drunk,
And I hate this,
And there is no point
In being mad at the sun,
But I hate that it still rises
In the same way that it
Has always risen
Even though the
Best thing in the universe
Is gone.
And I think this is why
Sunsets always remind me
Of the doctor’s eyes
When he told us that you died,
And I think this is why
I hate the rain
But I loathe the sun,
Because it keeps shining
And I am here sinking
And you are just gone.
Daze
1.
This is the regret that tastes
Like sunsets in cities too far from home,
That aches like not being where you should
And like loving who you shouldn’t.
This is the longing in your lungs
When you breathe in the wind of the ocean,
The burning in your throat
When the shower stings like rain.
This is the blue-sky-with-pink-clouds regret
That gives you nostalgia for what never was,
The bitter but beautiful regret
That smells like vanilla but tastes like it too.
It is the way love makes you smile,
And the way life makes you stop.
It is the regret of memories ended
And of memories never made.
2.
This is the regret that stings
Like oceans on your cheeks,
That burns like salt on cut hands
And tastes like blood on scraped lips.
This is the heaviness in your chest
When that old song comes on,
The hollowness in your heart
When you drink to not think about drinking.
This is the red-eyed-in-the-snow regret
When you see your parents in the mirror,
The cold but melting regret
Of wilted roses that still need water.
It is the way your sister runs
And the way your brother doesn’t.
It is the regret of too much trusting,
The regret of dreaming and of almost loving.
3.
This is the regret that feels like nothing,
Like white walls and static noise,
That hurts like numb legs dancing
And spins like dizzy moons, lost in space.
This is the lukewarm water from the sink
That you swallow without tasting,
The ringing in your ears
And the lawn mower outside your window.
This is the that’s it regret
That has no ending or moving on,
The paralyzing regret
Of a slip of fate that can never be undone.
It is the crushing weight of silence
And the weakness of your shoulders.
It is the regret of suns rising,
Of stars shining and of people dying.
St. Mark’s
When the last of the violins
Slowed and then silenced,
Their songs still lingered in the summer air.
The moon lit the square
And the sky kissed the sea
And then you were gone, lost to Venice.
I think I believed that
The songs would play forever,
That the sun would never rise and that you would never leave.
And I think I believed that
Love was right there, in St. Mark’s Square,
Dancing between lips of wine and eyes of green.
But the violins stopped
And the dusk became dawn,
And you disappeared, in to Venice.
The Past Is What We Leave
The only thing that I can feel
is the silence on your tongue
as you try to find oceans in faucets
and excuses in dust-filled lungs.
And I hate the way the stars look
when I know you’re looking too,
the stars that I have always thought
felt closer to home than you.
And I hate the way the rain sounds,
and I know you hate it too.
And I hate the way I can’t forget
how much I hate hating you.
But you do not have to say you’re sorry,
though I know you think you do,
because the past is what we grieve and hate,
but it is what we leave too.
Bliss
A whiskey too many and suddenly I am lost in a moment where my grandfather is still singing to the bees as he gardens and my grandmother is still reading on the porch as the daylight fades and my sister is still laughing at the way the birds dance in the wind and my dog is still sleeping in the shadow of the peach-pink sunset, and my life now still seems many lives away.
My grandparents never did say that they loved me
But, once, on a full-mooned night in June, I drunkenly destroyed their kitchen and all of their hand-painted plates that they had collected over the years, and when my grandpa saw the mess, he said, “thank god you are finally home.”
I wish I could drift through these memories forever.
It’s strange the way the past always visits through whiskey, like an old friend that I never want to see. For once, though, I decide to catch up.
Dents
These dents
are old childhood memories,
slams from my head,
punches from my fist,
and stains of every time
I hated the world
preserved on a single wall
covered in dents and paint chips:
all that remains untouched
in the room where I grew up,
which feels so far away now
that I can’t remember if this
specific dent is from my own hand,
filled with rage,
or if it’s from the hammer
in the hand of the workman
as he built this very wall
one hundred and twenty-two years before,
when this house was in a town
untouched by the wars,
and all of the troubles
had yet to be troubled,
when every dent, in every wall
in every moment of my childhood
was just a flat wall,
and the head and the fists that made them
were the grandson of my grandfather’s
grandfather’s father
and his lovely-eyed wife
and their own dented walls.
