Monday, June 8, 2009

STOWAWAYS

--For those failed friendships we often visit in our dreams and desire long after we've stowed them away.


“Sit down. Let me channel my voice directly from yours so I may have a better understanding of what we are dealing with today:”

I haven’t written anything—not poetry, not the random ideas fluttering through my head encasing some wild prompt for a story—in so long. In fact each time I persuade myself to touch my pen to a piece of paper in my speckled black and white composition notebook, nothing is produced. Not a single letter. An interrogation emerges as I find myself struggling with radical ideas I presumed were put away long ago--placed in a beaten knapsack and buried under mounds of raggedy old clothes kept in vacant drawers to liven the empty space. But naturally, like the old track t-shirts from middle school, some things must come to a steady end, even if that end is more bitter tasting than hoped for. These ‘ends’ may happen to grace the life of another—perhaps the apparel was shipped to the Salvation Army—or exist in solitude. Either way, they are out of my view and I cannot say I miss them. You ask, withered in doubt—especially at my last statement, “What about the exceptions, the stowaways?” Surprised by an unexpected interjection, I reply, “There are none, not when the object you’ve tossed away has premeditated thoughts about leaving long before you’ve given voice to an opinion.” She squints her eyes into mine as if looking through the blinds at the open sun--I suppose to search for a tinge of bluff, or perhaps to find some comfort where these unsympathetic words provide none. Finding an empty vase of cobwebs, she takes a deep breath and leaves the tent, and my crystal ball, and ten crumpled dollars imprinting the stress from her creped fingers. Smoothing out each dollar bill against the edge of the table I mentally repeat our conversation one last time.

The truth is, if what you seek is the truth even though many a time it does not alleviate a situation but rather complicate it, I lied. There are stowaways; however, their existence depend upon those who are willing to sacrifice a piece of them for something that, although extravagant and pleasing, are rather unsafe, momentary, and self-served in nature. And, if that does not create enough helium to shoot her truth-balloon through the sky, I’m sure this will: I only wish I had enough strength left in me to make her one of them.

After smoothing the creases from the last dollar bill on the table I placed them neatly in a cramped, hand-made wooden box, shutting it tight knowing those dollar bills are the last piece of anything I’ll share with her again.