Swallowed in the sea of green and gold and the lost and homeless

Wasn’t graduation a time of celebration, when hats raised to the ceiling meant transcendence of time and space and the in-between? You were out. Out of that prison, that prison so many called home. Skewed perception, am I right?

But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t some holy night, some speaker of the peace. A flame should have been burning in prayer. But it was distinguished, you could feel it, see the smoke cloud the sun and wash away those green and gold colors so many came to paint their very skin. 

Not mine, no, no, no, never. What is life when all you ever feel is the moment candlelight is blown to ash, and wax hardened to the mold of your finger, that desire to burn like the rest, like you, inside. 

And when I stood before those people, I imagined what the person who called himself my father must look like; what he might feel, if he feels the desire to burn like the wax in its liquid heat, or the wick consumed in flames. I couldn’t stop myself from wishing he was gone, away from haunting my life, my existence, my coffin of safety I made to protect myself from his very draining, needy being. 

He was there against my wishes. I was only a child they say, no coffee for you, but go to college and get a job and pray; I grabbed my diploma, I grabbed my friends hand, my face red, my eyes watering, songs that whispered “they’re just spies,” raced along the inside of my ear and tired mind when I left that stage where so many failed to clap for me and my soft-spoken tears. I faced that doorway where I could see the man I hadn’t seen in years wait with caution. Vines stretched out to me, trying to tangle me up in devil’s snare. Deep breath, walk, “Hey J,” “Hey, hello.” And on I go. Wave of my hand, head bent, what do I do now, now, nothing, sit down.

And afterwards when I could find no one else but that very man who handed me a poem that spoke of pride and love only for blood and made-up words that was a testament to the imagined of what it would have been like to watch me grow from that “baby with blue eyes in my arms to a girl who holds her own.”

All I could do was hold my own, and care for someone who only cared when they had someone back home in their bed to hold and replace that loneliness, burning loneliness. 

Where did holding my own go? When I couldn’t say all the words I wanted to say, that slithered within with such sharp grace. Fake it. Thanks. Appreciation. I have to go. And to go guilt took nest within my gut of monarch butterflies. Can you feel that? Humanity, it’s energy all together and red and yellow and green and blue and purple. I closed my eyes and walked forward with increased speed. Where’s my family? What’s that? Do they exist? 

Nod of the head to a boy that lingered between the two; my face red, my eyes heavy in blue. Did he notice the way the green sweat its grasp as I increased the gap? The way my face held its own despair, regret, need to care and protect. 

And I was near breakdown, always working, pretending for others. And this was just another day; graduation, what did that even mean? I spoke of it to those people who did nothing but fail to notice, rather prizing in judgments. They looked at me with no emotion, I gained power with daggers of words. I told them. My one moment for truth. Beat the butterflies from my stomach, my lips and mouth and tongue dry from fear. Below you, who are you! I cried in nervous speech. Here’s me, here’s to my hard work, pain stakes and broken betrayals. The truth of how they made me feel, how no one notices one another, and we all keep going on without a care. How friendships were made throughout the years for a one-time playmate in the sandbox. A free for all, contest for the rich and famous and loud, yes the loud. I told them, I wasn’t sure of myself, but I can hold my own. With a glance to the boy that lingered between the two, always guarded, I wondered if he heard what I said. If he even cared. That it was done, over.

Like my graduation, like the kindergarten judgments, and stars that shone above an aqua lagoon, me on my back, weightless, my eyes looking for anything to call home. 

Open up your eyes, home is where the heart is, they say.

And good God do I want to know what that means, to give me heart, give me soul to patrol, patrol, survive and control where I can finally hold my own and say that this is where my heart is.

Tree of Life

Roots stretch through cold brown dirt; they intertwine together, linking arms, connecting the past to the present to the future. The tree, the roots speak of our family history, so long and forgotten; no one really knows the beginning, no one really knows the ending. Mind racing, braking, slowing to a drowsy stop painted leaves a tinge of green, roots a dripping brown. As kids did we one day think we would become this? You know, from that age where we held onto a yellow balloon with all our might; don’t let go, don’t let it fly into a space so black and glittered with stars and suns and moons and red planets bigger than our thumb and eye. Where spaceships flew and air was hard to come by. And without warning, the balloon leaped your grasp, and you cried out for help, for someone to bring it down, away from the unknown that was so dark with no night light to keep you safe. Leaf by leaf hung delicately to each branch and root, and we grew to become shy with our big, forgiving eyes. It was that first moment, that first realization that the rest of the world didn’t love us unconditionally like they used to, and they didn’t cry out for the yellow balloon that flew into the unknown, so dark, so constraining. They weren’t there when you painted eggs, blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, and you asked which sticker was best to finish it off. Which sticker, that was it. And there they were, your mother, your brother, your grandparents and adults that seemed so close because they were. They sat there and they smiled. “Which sticker do you like?” “I like you.” And a grin, pure and naive, broke your face into a million little pieces, and you spread your roots into the ground, into that one memory where easter eggs and stickers and people that loved you radiated in rays from the sun above; your biggest night light from the blackness of space and sky. Because we grow and our trunks age with lines that hug in circles, so deep and clear. And the roots wrap with such grace to connect our past to present to future. And like trees, we were alone, yet connected from leaf to leaf where we fell from innocence and youth and the summer breeze one after another, each changing like the seasons. We reinvented ourselves, cleansed in a sort of rebirth from the old ways of desire for unconditional love from the mass of piling, decomposing leaves. To love, to cry for the love of the roots we dug so deep, without a night light where we realized that no one loved us like they used to, that we were different away from our family, our roots. As trees of life we cried out for a yellow balloon in space: “This is not the end.” 

Embittered French Rose

“Adieu, adieu,” she said in the midnight hour; to the wind, the trees, the stars, broken alleyways and missed payphone calls.

Comme il faut; we all go on when the world stops spinning, and we have a chance to sit in our chaise longue and think, really think and watch the leaves blossom, and fall with each changing day.

And right in that moment, we whisper to ourselves, fermer les yeux:

“We are content.”

Earlier that night, the girl with long blond hair made her way down the Champs-Elysées, she walked côte à côte the Seine; the summer air stuck heavy to the nape of her neck.

Leaving the café, with her café au lait still steaming with wisps of blanc, she wished the nearby étranger, “Au Revoir,” and scurried off to the prochaine rue.

She noted the twilight hour and was transported to the belle époque when life was simple, elegant, and beautiful.  The cri de coeur pierced her with such intensity that she stopped for a moment and leaned against the rail to feel the wind, the trees, the stars and broken alleyways and missed payphone calls. She wanted to capture that one moment and sew another patch into her âme essence, paint another picture, breathe life into a dying sigh.  

When she reached the quartier, she watched as smoke cradled in waves from burning cigarettes. When engulfed in flames, she thought to herself.

With a light touch of the shoulder and an “entrez-vous,” she ducked beneath the low wooden beams to squeeze into the sea of people.

Déjà vu called the masse en rapport. Her head swam with a lyrical chord that beat with every string. The floorboards moved with a rouge ambiance, and as if in a masquerade, shadows spun in release to society’s beck and call—a rendezvous of sorts, for the lonely, the moved, the feeling.

As if a party of the fin de siècle, everyone was en suite, the entire world spinning in melodic symphony.

It’s like a coupe de foudre and you are struck, and you can’t move, paralyzed, mesmerized with him, her, that look, that sense of belonging, where you are home.

The espirit de corps swirled together in such beauty that the sway of bodies imprinted silhouettes onto the walls, the floors, the aura of energy itself, that moment captured in joie de vivre, a certain je ne sais quoi.

Who’s to call a faux pas? One’s own gauche, awkwardness defines the raison d’etre, unites us as individuals, living, breathing like a roman-fleuve of great sagas.

As her body pulsed with the blood of people and music coursing through her veins, the source of life’s light, she ran, away, faster, quicker now. Moving alone, among the boulevards, her debutante acted as a transformation from a world so young, new, naïve, where she questioned the very importance of amour-propre: why we can only love others once we love ourselves.

 “Adieu, adieu,” whispered the girl like a billet-doux nearing the end.

“Touché,” sang the midnight sky in the moonlight hour of a shooting star that brushed the black canvas of a film noir.

Encore, Encore. Adieu, c’est la vie.