Heaven...

Sometimes I forget what this song is really about.  Love, right?  Well, most of the time I sort of felt like it was an existential statement.  Heaven, are you really out there?  Is there really a chance that things are going to get better?  Maybe that's why David loved this song so much.  This was the design I made that is based on my idea of a tattoo in his honor.
I will never forget the first time he played me this song, in his little black civic, driving through the country to Wagon train, shaking his fist in the air when Jeremy goes up an octave.
I miss you, David.

Heaven - The Fire Theft

I know it's been awhile, but...

two years and a thousand miles

Civic

 for David

The engine hasn’t turned over

since you stepped out.

Alone in the church parking lot,

I wander around its dark figure,  

admire your spray-paint stenciling

of Martin Luther King Jr.,

his left hand waving goodbye

beneath orange clouds of rust,

and the Banksy Balloon Girl,

carried away by white balloons,

each filled with a letter of FREEDOM;

she will meet with you soon.

Behind the dirty back windshield

there is a single, cake-flecked fork,

and an incomplete box of birthday candles,

twisted thin, melting in the morning sun. 

- Zack Strait

the memory of hands

*story*

It was past three in the morning.  The lights in the hospital were still blazing in the cold black wintry night, everything else bathed only in the soft orange of fluorescent street lights.  I was shivering even though I was sitting in my car.  You would think I would have the window up, but I did that sometimes, rolled the window all the way down and blasted the heater.  Hot on one side, cold on the other.  I liked the clash of temperatures on my skin.  My tears would turn into icy drops of water on my cheeks, like I was standing in a rainstorm.  I would let them roll down my skin and drip from my chin and my nose until my skin felt strange.

I had waited until I knew everyone was gone or asleep.  I couldn't be sure that I would go undetected, but I had made friends with the nurses, told them my side, and they had unanimously agreed not to bar me from the room if I did manage to make it past the waiting room without being seen.

I tossed the remainder of my cigarette onto the thick layer of ice that coated the parking lot and took a long, shaking breath.  Some part of me knew this was the last time I would be here, the last time I would dare to creep into this place at night, and I had to make it count.

I crawled out of my car, rolling the window up quickly and trying not to slip on the sheets of ice.  I was wearing tennis shoes with no traction and had already fallen several times over the last few horrifying days.  Part of me wanted to go running, sliding, careening into the blackness, feel the sharp pain of the crash, the broken bones, the tearing skin.  Blood.  I needed to feel.  Instead, all I could dredge up inside my chest was a rippling ache of fear, dulled by overwhelming exhaustion and loneliness.  I imagined all the possibilities as I hunched my shoulders and trekked across the dark parking lot.  I could almost see the looks on his sisters' faces, the glare from Dan, the sorrow in Karen.  But I had to do this, even if they were lurking somewhere in the corners of the third floor.

My body was running on the last bits of energy I could muster.  I hadn't been sleeping, but I had definitely been drinking.  A lot.  More than usual.  I could hear his voice in my head, a prophet speaking the summer before, "You know, you're becoming an alcoholic."  And my retort now was, "So what?  What are you going to do about it?  You're in a fucking hospital bed."

I felt a strange rush of anger and panic.  What if they really did stop me?  What if they found out that I had been here?  I wanted to take my fist and crush it against the nearest car window, and I stopped, contemplating this idea, like it was really a feasible option.  As I stared at the window, tinted black and ridiculously reflective, I could see my face.  Pale white in the light from the hospital windows with dark, blue shadows like bruises beneath both of my eyes.  My mouth was in a tight long line, like I was holding in my breath, and as my head began to swim, I realized that I was holding my breath.  My heart beat slowly, but each beat was like the kick of a peddle on a bass drum.  Thunk.  Thunk.  I could almost hear the beat in my ears.

I began moving again.  My feet had begun going numb, but I hadn't noticed until I nearly slipped without moving.  I hunched my shoulders against a brutal blast of cold air and ducked my head, unintentional tears spilling out from beneath my lashes, freezing onto my cheeks.  As the automatic doors slid open, I wiped my eyes roughly, feeling my cheeks burn beneath my fingers.  I looked terrible, but I would not let anyone see me cry.  That was my limit.

My knees were knocking against each other as I stood in the elevator.  I felt like my insides were quaking involuntarily from the lack of sleep and the burning alcohol in my veins.  That was something I hadn't thought about until that moment.  Would the nurses know I had been drinking?  But then, I wondered, would they care?  Didn't they understand?
When the elevator doors finally slid open, I hesitated.  The last people in the world that I wanted to see might be just down the hall.  I had planned and schemed a way around seeing them, but now that plan seemed to have flown out of my head.  I took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall before the doors closed, my heart hammering, and looked up and down the hall.

The waiting room was just down the hall from where the elevators opened, and I crept toward it, having studied its blind spots.  I knew his father had taken to sleeping in a sleeping bag in the waiting room.  He had been there for days.  When I pressed myself against the wall just beyond the windows into the room, I craned my neck carefully and looked inside.  The room was completely and totally empty.  No playing cards, no board games, and no overnighters.  Nobody.  My heart was hammering even harder.  Had something happened?

I felt my hands shaking as I stuffed them into my pockets, and I was wishing that I had a flask hidden in my coat somewhere, but I just reminded myself why I was there in the dead of night, and I turned and began walking to the end of the hallway.

He had a corner room, and I imagined it having big bay windows that looked out over the empty southern side of town.  I had tried to figure out which room was his from the parking lot, but I had never been quite sure which windows were his, and part of me didn't want to know.  Staring up at them only made me feel more alone, being outside and looking in instead of beside his bed.  As I approached the room, I could see that the door was cracked and the lights were off.  No sound came from the room except for soft beeps from the machines surrounding the bed.  I had never seen inside the room, and I had no idea what to expect when I gently pushed the door open.  I was half hoping someone would see me coming and realize that they never should have barred me in the first place.  But the room was dark and void of family and friends.  Nearly every available inch had been taken up by his long, broad shouldered body.  My chest burned, and new tears began to well in the corners of my eyes, but I sucked in a shaking breath and took two quaking steps toward the bed.

IV's and tubes encircled his face in a halo of white.  His skin looked almost translucent in the dim hallway lights, and despite the tubes in his nose and mouth, he looked peaceful, like he might only be asleep.  The half-dead part of me thought for a moment that I might wake him up if I touched his hand, but when I reached down, hands shaking so badly that I could barely control them, and took his hand in my own, his grip was slack, and his skin was cool.  Such soft hands for a boy, I thought, feeling the skin in my own rough fingers.  And in that moment, the howling desperate fear seemed to rise in me like a monster, and I had to choke back a gut-wrenching sob.

I gripped his hand like he was saving me from drowning, and I bent my head over our entwined fingers and felt the tears drop from my eyes onto skin, cold, dripping down onto the floor.  My shoulders were shaking, and I whispered, "Please, please don't die."  I couldn't think of anything else to say.  I felt rooted to the spot; I couldn't move.  I couldn't let go, because I believed for one moment that if I did he would go; he would be gone.

I didn't feel time passing me.  I didn't hear the sounds around me.  I didn't move.  I just told him everything silently with my eyes, my gaze frozen on his face.  Silence.

He found me standing there, transfixed by the darkness of the room and the light of skin and tubes.  His father, wearing a flannel shirt and sporting new bags under his eyes and lines on his face.  He touched my shoulder, and I flinched like he had burned me.  He whispered, even though his son couldn't hear anything, "Come on."

I followed without a fight.  The shreds of energy that had propelled me into his room had crumbled into dust.  I couldn't even find the strength to care if I was torn to shreds by his father.  But he didn't rip me apart.  He put a hand on my back and guided me into the hallway, passing some energy from himself to me.  I could feel the walls around my tears crumbling again, but I held my breath.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice cracking and combining with a sob toward the end.  He didn't say anything.  He just nodded.

"Don't tell them," I continued, my voice shaking with tears and pain, "please, don't tell them I was here." He knew who I meant.  Don't tell his brother; don't tell his sisters; don't, oh please don't tell his friends.  I stumbled on.  I wouldn't let him send me away.  I would choose when I left, because I knew this would be the last time I would be here, and I wanted it to count.

"And don't ever tell him I was here, or that I brought you coffee, or that I made you food, or anything..."  I was shaking so hard that I thought I might fall over.

"Okay," he whispered.  The look on his face made me feel some kind of satisfaction.  Even though he knew why I was asking, he didn't like it, and he would do it under protest, even if he agreed.  But he had agreed.  And no one would ever know.

I wanted to put my arms around his neck and hug him until the pain was gone.  How many times had I hugged him that way?  But instead of moving toward him, I took a step back, never looking into his face.

"I'll...see you later," I whispered, my heart hurting so much that I glanced down at my chest just to be sure there wasn't a knife protruding from it.

My escape was a blur of lights and walls, smudged together by my tears, tears I wouldn't allow to fall until I had finally made it into the parking lot.  And as soon as that blast of frozen air smashed into my face, I ran.  I ran and ran to my car, slid inside as fast as I could, and sped away from that place as quickly as possible, into the dark, black nothingness around me.

*the end*

David died 2 weeks after this happened unexpectedly during a routine procedure from a blood clot on February 8, 2010.

my room overlooks the world, an ocean in a raging storm

now I'm caught drifting through this world alone

I have no home.

the memory of hands, held together warm and gentle,

I try to forget and fail.

The sky is dark, clouds are forming, rain is pouring,

I know you'd be dancing.

Remember the night when you turned and looked,

You smiled to me and then you were gone.

I can't stop feeling those final moments,

God forgive me.  I can't let them go.

And I cry, but I don't let it show.

Do Not Weep

I know I don't have much of a right to grieve over certain things, especially when they're one hundred percent my fault.  But there's a part of me that feels broken today, that has felt broken since yesterday.  Holding a child in my arms, imagining what it might have been like to hold my own child in such a way. What kind of person would I have become if I had had a child?  Could I have changed?  I definitely would never have met Nathan, and I would've been linked to Johnny for life.  That broken feeling, though, comes from the knowledge that I had something beautiful that I hated and then lost.  That knowledge, more than anything, makes me wish that I could go back to those days and change things.  What if I never have another chance?  


I love this poem, and tell myself to believe it will be what that child will say someday even though it makes my heart ache to think it:


Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
- Mary E. Frye

I can't review books worth a crap, but I sure do love 'em.

So, I'm in love with goodreads.com.  I love it.  And, I challenged myself to read 1,000 books this year.  Trust me, once I get on house arrest I'll really have time to read.  Fun.
Anyway, I just finished Cinder by Marissa Meyer, and I really, really loved it.  I know it's one of those things - that "Cinderella Story" thing - but I think I'm a sucker for that, which is probably why I loved it so much.  But it was a nice change after reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, not that that wasn't a fun book too, but it wasn't as well written as Cinder.  The crappy thing about this most recent book is that there won't be a sequel until 2013.  Trust me, even though it says "cyborg" in the summary, it's worth a read.  It's fun, sad, romantic, etc.
Anyway, I hit writer's block and cleaned the crap out of the basement.  One of the kids had shoved a bunch of toys/garbage/dishes under the futon I sleep on, so gutted it, sorted everything, and moved the furniture around.  It really looks like a bedroom now.  I set up the futon so that we can put it up when the boys want to play video games, and I can put it back down when I want to sleep.  Billy Collins said it, though.  Cleaning really does get the writing juices flowing.  I've been feeling inspired now for about an hour.  Woot.
I think listening to books is as important as reading them for me.  Sometimes my internal voice gets so jumbled up with my vision of a story that I can't think in words anymore, so when I try to write, I can see the story but I can't put it into words.  I'm not sure that makes any sense, but I know what I mean, and I'm the only one that reads these posts anyway.
I know I should sleep, but I really don't actually want to, and I'm not sure if I should.  I'm afraid that if I do, I'll lose all these words that are piling up inside of me.  I really don't want to go to church tomorrow either, and if I sleep, then it'll be morning and I'll have to go...
Anyway, enough.
Let me make one promise though.  I will never write about robots.  There are only a few people in the whole flipping world that can pull that off without making me want to vomit.  Marissa, let me just say, you are one of them.  Thanks for the story.

Providence

Is it okay for me to be annoyed with other writers?
Okay, I know it is. I feel like an ass thinking this way, but when I read a book, and I like it, I hate it when it slowly gets worse and worse until you know that they seriously pieced the thing together just to make it end the way they wanted.  I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'll try to explain it a bit better.
I just finished reading Providence by Jamie McGuire.  I knew what to expect, and I saw the whole story line pretty much ten pages in, but I read because I like to be entertained, and because I live vicariously through other people's romance.  Disappointed isn't the right word, because it was what I expected it would be after I had started reading it.  I think I was hoping it would be better than it was.  The writing feels really juvenile, which works just fine when you're writing for juveniles.  The thing is...okay, children's authors often have to write in a very specific way to reach their audience.  They adapt and manipulate their language and story to appeal to a younger audience.  What I've discovered about a lot of YA authors is that they write YA books because they still think and feel the way they did when they were fourteen.  Writing their stories doesn't require adaptation, because this is how they write.  The immaturity of the writing just seeps through the surface of the story and all through the consciousness of the characters.  Annoyance is probably a better word for how I feel than disappointment.  Annoyance because I can tell that these writers could write better if they just spent more time on developing the story and less time on pounding out emotions and feelings.  What's more is that their male characters are almost always horribly unrealistically emotional and needy.  Men are not emotionally collapsing or emotionally distant.  There are all these other places they exist in between.  YA authors are almost always women, and they almost always depict men the way they wish they were.  No one's doing any teenage girl a favor if they do that.
Now, don't get me wrong, if one of these authors came upon this blog post and felt indignant, saying to themselves, "Let's see her do better", I'm not sure that I could.  I just know that I'm trying to do better than that.  If I wrote that way, I wouldn't let myself settle for that kind of book.  I would rip it to shreds, change it and hone my skills until it was the best that it could be.  Maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist.  When it's your career, wouldn't you want it to be the best that it could be?  Trying to make it less seems lazy to me.  Sorry, Jamie, your writing makes me feel like you're being really lazy.  That expression really hits the nail on the head.
(about 20 minutes later)
My sister just got back to me about my first 4 chapters of my new book, and I find that asking for her criticism was actually really, really helpful.  I used to hate asking her for her opinion, because I couldn't explain why I was writing things the way I was, but email works well.  Plus, I guess I had to learn that if I ever want my writing to be worth anything, I'm going to need her help.  She did it for my dad, and he got published...
The world feels strange tonight.  I felt it when I woke up from my nap earlier, and I think some of that is because I was reading that stupid book, but I feel like it's early morning, not the middle of the night.  I'm also having a hard time grasping reality.  I'm sure that expression is way overused, because this inability to distinguish reality from dreams feels so completely different than that weird niggling sensation of deja vu because I dreamt something and then it happened.  This is just straight up "I don't know where I am or what time it is" for a long, long time.  Or forgetting that I'm me and not someone else.  I know, I sound like I'm on drugs.  But that's probably the biggest problem.  Whenever I've felt this way before, I would just drink until I didn't feel so off anymore.  I can't do that now, so the world won't right itself.  Weird, right?