I want to say it right.
When I was a kid, I went to the theatre a lot. Mom found a deal…where a theatre would show get this: 2-3 year old movies. Washed out washed up movies. You got a soda and some popcorn but it, the popcorn, always tasted like the cardboard box around it.
Once they were going to show Black Beauty. It was going to be better than the previous week’s “Little Vampire”. When we drove to that theatre it felt like driving to see Black Beauty.
When he wasn’t there, I stood on my chair. When the lady with the undulating voice told me to sit down I went to look at the tiles in the bathroom. They were the same green you always see.
What I mean to say is that….
Sometimes I would leave Smarties out for either Jesus or you. You were both close.
But I couldn’t see you. Who is the man that makes me feel things exactly? Where are his hands and is their space for me? I thought that you could hold on to me holding myself together. If I could find you.
I mean…..I mean….I mean that I saw you sleeping at the Grand Canyon. But only your spindles. And the good acts of men have shown me your backbone and when I came out those theatres walking as what the hour and a half was about I felt your footsteps.
But you never stay long enough, and only in my stomach. When life feels like living you’re there. And it is then that I look down and inside myself and I see you there. I see the top of your head and a glance of your elbow as you stir soup there. I’ve put you through long winters.
I mean…. I mean that he’s in the moments that feel like moments. I mean that he’s in staring out the window too long. In the chairs if you’ll just stand on them, in the runt of the liter stuck in the bag that doesn’t get tossed in the lake. In the words said right and the souls that sing for the other and the pretty violin that sounds like.
I’ve seen his ears, and heard his heart. Seen the back of his neck walking away. To know that face, reach out, hold onto it…. close.
I mean to say—don’t tell me. Don’t tell me how.