I made the mistake of thinking about you today on the airplane, on the wing of that same place I’ve always thought of her: My lover, the future.
When I was in high school, I told my friend Katie that the one you should marry is the one you can’t figure out all the way. I categorized people back then. I figured that, she’s a cheerleader and he’s a jock, and he’s a video games and math kind of guy, but there will be one girl who is always a mystery to me, and with her I will always be enamored.
Nowadays, I don’t think anyone is quite possible to figure out down to their bones, yet some still try to come off as simple. They try to blend in or just follow the popular trends, not wanting to stand out from the herd. Some are more complicated or complex than others, yes, but every one of us is a well of fog. Each of us has endless music inside of us, but we’re just singing different songs.
I stared at the blinking lights on the wing while Philadelphia slipped beneath us. I barely noticed the turbulence as I watched Past Lives, which stirred up all sorts of feelings within me. It reminded me of Monica, my middle school sweetheart, and explored what could have been, reflecting on it all these decades later.
Five years ago, I told her I couldn’t hear what she said to me out on that pier on Cape Cod through the noise of all the years.
Now I don’t know if I can even sit up straight beneath the weight of them.
Childhood is a weight you carry for the rest of your life because it calls out, reminding you of just how good and pure it can be. The only thing that grows stronger is the longing to go back to it.
It used to be a longing for the future but now it’s a longing for that pier, her coat, that meteor shower over the warm summer waves.
I can’t stand up beneath the weight of them, Monica. The years get heavier and heavier, and now I understand why the elderly curl up: they’re carrying the most.
Regret and imagination are twin curses. The amount of time I’ve given over to wondering what life would have been like with her is ludicrous. It’s this thing that’s so close to being real that you can reach out and touch it, like a demon perched on the wing of this airplane. Just have to break some glass to get him, but is it worth the risk?
I suppose I’d break my arm for that life; for how pure I imagine it to be.
It’s tainted by the stain of nostalgia, meaning the skin folds and bad smells and disappointment — even the longing, because I don’t imagine myself wanting to be anywhere else when I recall those days — are washed out of it.
But maybe the life moving toward me is better. It’s realer, so by philosophical necessity, it’s better. Existence is better than nonexistence, but it’s still fun to play with some imaginary fire.
These sleep-deprived poems are the sort of language AI can never replicate…unless we can also deprive them of sleep, then perhaps they can be persuaded to burst into some ‘part-felt’ prose.
“Write drunk, edit sober,” as they say, although you can substitute alcohol for sleep deprivation while traveling.
Am I tired, drunk, or just a wicked good writer? (a and maybe c)
How do you know you grew up by the coast? “Wicked.” It was a stamp of ownership, and everyone needed the Cape to own them. Because then you were in. Then you were one of us.
But I never said wicked, and perhaps that’s why I always felt like an outsider. Perhaps that’s why I still do: A refusal to participate in the linguistic games of the local congregants.
-abrupt end because we landed-
e
Day 6 of 100 days of blogs.
0 comments on “7/27/2024, 4:45am, descending into Harrisburg”