Lit Nights, a Reading Series:
Friday, June 10, 6:30 pm
at Page Street (297 Page Street at
Laguna)
Join us as 15 talented writers
read original, no-more-than-3-minute pieces on our theme…Imposters, Scam
Artists, and Liars.
We’ll be pouring wine and
sophisticated non-alcoholic beverages.
Plus, there will be food (from
Mercury Café) for purchase.
The event is free and open to the
public. Proof of vaccination required.
Baz climbed off the bus. He's the last one to get dropped off and it always takes him a while to actually get down from there because he's busy showing Joe the driver his own bus. "It's conventional," Joe said. "It's a conventional type."
Our eyes locked. We knew what had happened. Baz didn't. He still doesn't.
Maybe it’s here that I decide. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look back and pinpoint it, say right then. Sometimes I think we only understand life in that glance over our shoulders, that backwards snippet of life that makes us realize how everything lines up. That sense is only made in the posterior, that hindsight. The sun in our eye, setting in a miasma of blood. Don’t try to interpret. Don’t attempt to flee. All you can do is blink.
I’d expected it to
be quiet here, but that’s not the case. Birds, bees, dogs, all of nature’s
kingdom. A whole lot of chipping and chirping. And the ocean across the
highway: folding and unfolding, beauty that conceals the sinister, sharks and
shit. I don’t trust water. I’ve lived in California my entire life, but the
coastline has never done much for me. If pressed, I’ll tell you I like lakes.
Contained, easier to navigate. But still. Fuck water. It depresses me.
So why am I here
if I’m so suspicious of it all? Aren’t I supposed to be impressed, taken? Rob
is, I can tell. And Po? He could live here. Then again, my dog could
live anywhere so long as there was kibble and the opportunity to eat his own
ass. He’s easy like that.
I’m here because the
softer part of me believes in magic.
I hug him. The minute I do, I realize that I don’t do it often enough. I check my email way more than I hug my husband. I check my texts probably three times more than I kiss him. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to change any time soon. Change takes place slowly. It’s like drip irrigation. A little bit at a time over a long time, and that’s if you’re lucky.
Holding him in my
arms feels different for some reason. It’s like he’s broken and I can feel
every jagged piece, like they’re pressing against my skin, threatening
puncture. Unlike me, Rob doesn’t vocalize every twist and turn of his emotions,
each step of the way, every footfall. That’s why it’s hard to know that
something is inside, that there are feelings, that he’s suffering. You rarely
know how hard something is with him. You only know his steadiness in the face
of – everything.
That’s why I value
this hug. It makes me feel less alone in my own silliness and sorrow. It helps
me to know that someone else shares my feelings, at least part of the time. No
one shares them all the time. That’s just damn impossible. Like when I feel so bifurcated
– needing to be alone, then lonely when I am. Things like that.
Go in the house.
Lean against the closed door that always, always stays closed. The tears
don’t come. They never do. I used to be such a crier. Back when I was happy. I
didn’t know it. Do we ever know it at the time? Is it only in retrospect that
we understand just how much we had? Had.
