Messages in Bottles

there comes a time

There comes a time, I was always told, and today that’s become the truest bit of advice I’ve ever received and chosen to scoff at.  I’d explain, but to do so I’d have to take you back to the very beginning, and though I might have the time for that, even the most patient of people wouldn’t.  Perhaps it will suffice to tell you about today, the way a drop of water would suffice for a parched man dying of thirst.  It all started with the alarms…

My alarm clock, I mean - the second of three that I set, each ten minutes apart, even though I always wake up after the first.  If you do the same thing for long enough, it becomes the same as breathing - mindless, automatic.  I turn off the second alarm, and the third before it goes off.  The first, however, is still ringing, and I can’t reach into the back of my skull to silence my biological clock.  Waking up at 7:00 AM is easy.  It’s feeling like I don’t have a reason to get out of bed that makes everything after that hard.

I came to this city ten years ago, to write, and that’s when I’d say I stopped.  They called this the place to be, where all one had to do was look up at the buildings to see the fruits of inspiration ripening before their very eyes.  They neglected to mention two things: that you needed a ladder to reach the top, and that dreams couldn’t help you buy one.  My empty hands couldn’t find purchase as they clawed at those slippery glass tree trunks, so I stopped trying.  I stopped trying, and I started resenting the suits whose smiles from so high up became sneers as I squinted at them.  Ironically - as the way of the world often is - that’s when I became one of them.  I was hired as a filing clerk, and now hundreds of thousands of dollars are made and lost on a whim at my discretion - all before lunch.

They don’t call it Wall Street for no reason.  Sure, we look the same as the people on the other side of the glass, but we aren’t.  Strip away our suits, unfasten our ties, remove our dress shirts, and what are you left with?  Not a man, not a woman.  Not a human being at all, but something less — something less, and therefore more.  We’re the crosshairs of the scope, the bullet in the barrel, the trigger and the finger that pulls it.  We’re ruthless, and no one mourns the ruthless, because mourners must love what they’ve lost, and no one loves the ruthless.

Anyways, I got out of bed and brushed my teeth.  I showered, I shaved.  I dressed and I ate.  After skimming the newspaper, I took the elevator down and hailed myself a cab.  As it pulled up to the curb, a woman stormed out of the lobby with a bundle of cloth and a scrunched little face protruding from the folds.

“Hey, sorry, but my son’s sick and a space opened up with the only doctor our insurance will cover.  We might miss it if we don’t hurry.  Do you mind catching the ne—…”

I looked down at my watch, then up the street.  No other taxis.  It was a twenty minute drive to the office, maybe thirty depending on traffic, and if another cab arrived within the next five, even then I’d still make it there at least ten minutes early.

“I’m late as well, I’m really sorry.”  She reached out to me, but I pulled away and stepped into the taxi.

I’m not even sure why I did it, and I felt something inside of me that I hadn’t in a long time.  It reminded me of when I told my mother it was my baby brother who flushed the corn cob down the toilet and got it clogged when it was really me.  The guilt in me flickered, and I reached into my pocket for my phone, but all of a sudden it was gone.  Everything was gone.

I looked out of the window to my right, and despite how cliche it sounds, it all happened in slow motion.  I heard the sound a split second before I felt the impact, which is an eternity for a man caught in the space between metal endeavoring hard to embrace metal.

If only I had the courage to make today the one I quit this job that I hated so much.  If only I hadn’t lied about the corn cob.  If only I had ignored the buzzing of my clocks.  If only I had let the woman and her baby…  No.  I couldn’t finish the thought.  Better me than them.  The poor kid though.  He’d probably overcome his sickness, but then every day after would be an uphill battle against an enemy called life that never loses; that ends, but never stops; that goes on and on, with and without you.

There comes a time, they always said, and this was mine.  It all started with alarms, and that’s how it ended.  The red and blue lights flashed as they approached, but my open eyes saw nothing.  At least no one would mourn me.  It was the least I could do.

dimmer

Do you remember that long weekend we spent with our friends by the edge of the ocean furthest away from civilization?  That night was the most brilliant I’ve ever known, more full of light and warmth than the day after the blanket of black was pulled from both the sky and our collision course comet eyes.  Even then, it was humid, and I thought the round moon was like a silver sun that evaporated the water and moistened the air so that each breath was like slowly drowning.  At our feet burned a bonfire that made the breeze into a sigh of relief while we sat side by side, turning the space between us into that between two burning coals when set close together.  The log beneath us would have caught fire if we’d left any oxygen in the air around us, but I was short of breath as I watched upon your face the spark of something glow while growing.  Overhead blossomed the petals of a bright red firework, overheard as a whisper above my booming heartbeat.  And when the sky was again calm enough for the stars to reappear, and the fire reached up high to cast its longest shadows on the sand, and the air was heavily anchored with the weight of a stifling humidity, it wasn’t any of these things that warmed or brightened me.  It was your mouth mashing against mine, our lips packed tighter than wet snow.

more than words

I haven’t always hesitated to use the words I love you.  There was this one time back in the summer before high school.  My best friend, a girl who was more a woman than anyone else in our year, with developed breasts and hips curved like handles that my inexperienced hands desired to hold on, told me that she was moving.

We were walking beside the park where we spent our childhood running from the passage of time, not yet knowing it was inescapable as our shadows that grew small and closest beneath us when the sweltering midday sun was highest in the sky.  She took my hand and squeezed it, and I smiled as I always did whenever I felt her palm pressing against mine.  But when she didn’t let go I felt a sense of urgency, and for the first time in my life I knew what the adults meant when they said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

She looked me in the eyes as she told me, and although I wanted to look away, her gaze held me closer than her hand that continued to tighten around mine.  When she had finished, there were clouds I’d never seen before putting a ceiling to those blue depths that I knew to be infinite.  Sure, I’d seen her cry a few times when we were younger — when she skinned her knee chasing that butterfly, and when that boy teased her for menstruating and I used my fist to give his nose a period — but she never fought this hard to keep the tears from falling, and to me, it was like a week-long threat of rain that made you wish the sky would just erupt already.

“I love you,” I said, without thinking, and the words were weightless as that last bit of evaporation that brings the thunderclouds crashing down.  She cried on my shoulder, and I kissed her on the forehead, and the tremors from her body rattled my ribs, rippling like echoes between my hollow bones.

She left the next week, and when we said goodbye, she said she loved me, too.  It was the only time we ever kissed.  The days after she left made me painfully aware of my heart, because it’s only when your heart is racing or aching that you can truly feel its presence.

Sitting there, on the swing I’d always let her use because the other one creaked, I understood that I lied to her.  I loved her - of that I was certain - but I couldn’t know that I did until she was gone.  I decided then that I couldn’t know if I loved a person until I had to be without them.  How else could I know?

That was a defining moment for me, because I’ve never said those words again, at least not before the woman would leave me.  So then sometimes I’d find fortune cookies from 2:00 AM visits to Chinese restaurants contained anagrams for I love you, or the last drops at the bottom of a bottle would spell out idiot.  I’d call them from the restaurant, or from my desk as the bottle spun to point towards the broken frame containing their picture, and I’d slur those three syllables with the sincerity of a bitter alcoholic going through withdrawals.

“Why did you have to wait so long?” they would always ask.  I would think about my friend from another lifetime, and I would fight back the tears the same way she did.

“Because I promised not to lie to you,” I would say, while uttering in my head an apology to the girl who taught me how to love.

the grass is greener where it rains

Tonight, the breeze upon my face makes the memory of your fingertips into a sunset that warms instead of scalding me.  The sky is darkening slower than the lake, which is the colour of the unused ink in the pen that idles on the blank page of the notebook on my lap.  I watch and listen from my front porch - to the trees as they murmur, to the crickets counting out the heartbeat of the world overcome by sleep - and I’m satisfied to be written for once instead of writer.  This contentment is to my writing as this evening to my soul - stifling as humidity.  But the longer this dry spell lasts, the heavier the clouds that gather above this porch will be.  And when the storm comes, I will turn my rooftop upside down, so that when the night is shredded into sections by lightning, my smile will be brightened while I sail against the waves that endeavour to capsize me.

shot down

Thank God it’s Friday, because those weekday hangovers are finally starting to take their toll, and drinking costs money.  If I had cleavage like the woman beside me at the bar, I wouldn’t have to pay for another drink in my life - because doesn’t life end when your breasts start to sag?  I suppose there’s a bra for that.  But anyways, I don’t blame her.  If slapping on a new face and batting fake eyelashes meant a liquid diet on the house, I can’t say I wouldn’t resort to that.  Well, maybe I could say it, but meaning it would be a different story.

We’re all carefully crafted deceptions - me with my ironed dress shirt and double windsored necktie, a noose I tied myself.  Or maybe it’s more like the ribbon wrapped carefully around a neatly packaged time bomb, all unsuspecting and polite as it counts down to the inevitable explosion — but there I go getting all sentimental again, so I point to my shot glass, and like a true friend, the bartender refills it without talking so I can swallow the bullet and kill these thoughts.  At least for a while.  I’m like the Jesus of alcoholics, after all - I’ll rise again, but not until Sunday.

I try to explain this to the woman that the breasts are attached to, but she makes a comment about eye contact, and I say something like, “What do you mean?  I haven’t taken my eyes off of you once.”  She doesn’t seem to appreciate it, but I think it even funnier that the indignant look on her face is the only reason I’ve decided to look up.  She prepares to leave, but not before calling me pathetic, so I try to apologize, though something about my laughter makes the whole thing sound insincere.  I’m a little hurt - laughing at her is the most genuine thing I’ve done all night.  As she turns on her heels - six-inch scarlet prongs stolen from Satan’s pitchfork - I catch a glimpse of her bare ankles, and from here, she looks like you, but then I guess a lot of people look like you when their backs are turned.

I swivel around to face the bartender and explain my newly found drinking game.  Take a shot down every time you’re shot down.  He says something with a smile, so I automatically ignore him, and all of a sudden there goes my one true friend.  I’m now immersed in my coffin of self-sabotage, buried six shots deep and still sinking, all because I can’t stop thinking.

I’ll let these girls believe I’m chasing them, because they’re just chasers — and you, the drink whose bitter aftertaste I’m still trying to wash from my mouth.

kind of a trip

At some point, one has to realize that if I fall in love as easily and as often as I do, it means that I must also rise out of it, because you can’t fall if you’re already falling.  And no one can be that clumsy, so perhaps I don’t fall, but leap instead.

four seasons, one love

Do you remember when we needed the summer ocean to cool us down at night?  When our love burned hotter than the sand that scorched our feet, and we shed our clothes to let our suffocated skin breathe the air that was choked with humidity while it blushed at our nearness?  The night sky that shimmered with a thousand thousand stars was cold when compared to the heat generated by the friction of our hearts colliding.  You were more beautiful then than the sand was plentiful, and it was infinite in the darkness while we waded naked in the shallow water that rippled as a result of our bodies melting into a single inseparable mould.  I’ll always believe that our romance brought about the summer solstice, and that all the days after its ending were shorter, darker, and much, much colder.

intoxicated

This Tuesday hangover from our Monday hangout has me stiff like crusted vomit and is turning the sun into a snob who thinks me shy as I turn from its stare.  My mouth is a desert cave with stalactite teeth that reek of your aftertaste, so I reach for my tall glass of water only to find it spilled on the floor.  I roll off the bed to drink it off the ground, from the broken glass of your chapped lips while you’re still stirring - both from your slumber and the alcohol left inside of me.  We look at each other and my shakes subside.  You pick up your clothes and I’m going through withdrawals.  You walk away and I’m drunk again.

mr. and ms. communication

“For the thousandth time, I don’t have an accent,” she said with that cute little accent of hers, and for the thousandth time, I smiled in rebuttal.  Her eyes were narrowed, eyebrows pointed inwards as if somehow the simple action could summon a winter to match her snowfall skin, one that would freeze the edge of the Atlantic that bordered her homeland, which she carried with her always in her grey eyes.  “Well, I suppose it’s the same as me thinking you’re a wonderful writer,” she replied to my silent smugness, knowing exactly how I’d react.

I had to stop myself from cringing, though I knew she wasn’t trying to be cruel or sarcastic.  Still, I didn’t see it - the same way she couldn’t hear her own accent - and then it occurred to me why I’d never appreciate my words as much as I would if they were penned by someone else.  They would always be mine, and that wasn’t to say that I didn’t love myself, though sometimes it was hard to, but because they were mine, they would never surprise me the way that an adage she brought from across the pond might.

She saw my discomfort then, and shedding the clumsiness of language, she linked her arms around my neck before pressing her lips ever so softly against mine, making sure I grasped her meaning - without using any tongue.

wish you were here

I don’t know what’s harder to believe - that I’ve been in this city for two years already, or that I have to stay for one more.  Don’t misunderstand me, it has its charm.  Each skyscraper I pass while I walk along the street is a monument to mankind’s achievements, but they command respect instead of inspiring it.  They’re not like the towering trees of home that kept me looking up, but the headstones in the family graveyard that made me bow my head.  This evening, however, the sun is setting between the buildings, and its warmth on my face is pooling beneath my chin, lifting it up so that I can’t help but stare into the sky.

It’s a moment like this that reminds me what I’ve left behind, because the unblemished blue looks the same here as it did in the country — big enough to hold every emotion, even the melancholy that makes my insides feel infinite and still expanding.  I had this thought once, that within our heads it must be very cold, and that tears are frozen before they fall since something liquid shouldn’t stab the back of my eyes like they’re doing now.  I know it isn’t true, but it’s comforting to create explanations for the things we don’t understand - empowering even - so as I stand here, outside the entrance to my apartment building, I can’t help but wonder why I feel like crying.

I make more money now than I could have hoped, so I’ve been able to buy myself that king-sized bed I always wanted, but what’s a king without a queen, and isn’t an unoccupied castle the same as a mausoleum?  Tonight, I know I’ll look down from my tower, at the neon signs lighting the boulevard, and they’ll be pretty, but they won’t be the stars or the fireflies that we mistook for stars as we sat beneath the old oak tree overlooking the lake.  And I’ll sleep tonight - don’t worry - if only for a few hours, though no amount of sleep could be more restful than our long talks that outlasted the darkness.

Maybe I’m a little homesick, but they say home is where the heart is, and mine’s with you, so leave the key under the mat on the front porch, and don’t change the lock.  I’ll be back as soon as I can, and then heart and home will never be beneath different roofs again.