You is a three-headed ghost from at least six different past lives. You is an empty canvas, therefore you is always full. You is the one. You is until something better comes along. You is an idea. You is an emotion. You is forever fleeting, therefore you is eternal. You is everyone. Therefore, you is no one. One of the cold comforts of a photographic memory, is that you can’t take away anything I have ever seen. And that is why you is always with me. I’ve seen you. Many sides of you. And I will have you until I see you again and forever after that. Even if I never see you again.
Coyote ugly
“You un-friended me? That’s like a modern-day public pillorying.”
“Oh god, Kalani, you’re so dramatic. I had to cut you off. You kept posting weird shit on my wall. My family reads that you know?”
“I was just telling you that it’s probably not a good idea to friend your kids. Your 16-year-old doesn’t need to know what you look like dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I deactivated my account completely.”
“It actually does. Singling out one person out of 3 billion users is quite a statement, don’t you think? At least now I blend in with the rest of the planet.”
“I wanted my privacy back. And I felt like I had to respond to everyone who contacted me. I don’t need that. I actually feel free.”
“Hippie.”
The ledge
I remember talking you down from there once or twice. That might be the difference between you and me. You came down.
I’m not quite sure if I enjoy the sweaty-palm excitement of maybe almost falling. More likely, the culprit is complacency. A person can get used to almost anything. And after this much time, one might wonder if I didn’t prefer the heights.
It sure does seem a long way down, though.
The calculus of fidelity
So it happened on one of those days when we weren’t really together. Nowadays, that was almost every day. And the calculus of our expected fidelity was never quite calculated anyway. But there was a new glint of something in the reflection of the sun on one of those days. That’s the point, I mean. It only happened because it was one of those days.
I had drinks with a Bumble or Hinge named Jolene, and the first thing I thought to myself was that she was nothing like the song. Nonetheless, when she spoke, I found myself enjoying listening to her. Maybe the Ray LaMontagne version. That might actually be the perfect allusion, though I always hate when writers I like make allusions to songs I’ve never heard. It is, in fact, how I learned about Nina Simone when I was 15, so there’s that. Always exceptions.
Enough
Hard, heavy cathartic. Like everything it isn’t perfect. When you plane a board to make it smooth. Heavy music planes my jagged soul. My girlfriend can only hear noise. I hear angels trumpeting. Deflecting. Whispering. Ssshhh. They’re not shouting, “Do it.” They are under the breath saying, “Enough!”
The end of things
I never knew anyone like her. She seemed a different person than she was. She said, “I’m sorry people think I’m pretty.” And she was pretty. But the beauty came with pain. She was abused. And even though she was massively intelligent, the majority only saw her face and her body. Which were incredible. But some of us looked deeper. I loved her, like I might never love again.
What a waste. What a tragedy this love was. Empty. Lost forever. Never to be recovered. She had stars in her eyes. But terror in her heart and weight in her feet. We were lost before we were found. We were at some party, and she didn’t say anything. And I knew it was the beginning of the ends of things.
Fractals
When she looks up at me, she has this light in her eyes, both giddy and conspiratorial, like the look a friend would give you 30 minutes after you’ve both taken mescaline and the patterns on the carpet start turning into Aztec fractals.
When you stop
I’ve never been stabbed. I assume it’s not fun. I accidentally cut my wrist once and exsanguiated and hallucinated and thought my ex-wife, my mom, and her twin sister were ten feet from the foot of my bed and waiting to see me.
That night (that morning?) before the ambulance, the police were banging at my door and i answered and I kept repeating, “I didnʻt do anything.” “Your neighbor saw blood on the sidewalk.” He wrapped my arm in the welcome mat and spoke to the walkie talkie thing on his shoulder, said some numbers, and I fainted.
For the record, those plastic wrap non-handcuff handcuffs are remarkably effective. They don’t let you stand up for an entire 72-hour psych hold. Even when, especially when, you think you didn’t do anything. Say that out loud and see what happens.
Dr. Dre and Shakespeare
I thought I wouldn’t make it without stealing. When I was walking down the hill. And I was thinking to myself that Dr. Dre was a genius. He rapped over a tuba. That doesn’t seem important. It’s literally seven notes over and over. Then he gets Eminem when he was still manic and high to say fuck god and scream and scream and lose his mind. And those seven notes make sense. Bah. Bah bah. Bah bah. Bah bah. (Whatʻs the difference between me and you? Go listen to it). But, I digress.
So, I’m walking down the hill. I feel fibrillation. The subtle vibrations of pre-seizure. My fingers cramp, my hamstrings buzz. They shake, but only I know they’re shaking. I think about Shakespeare and soliloquies, and I repeat in my mind just walk, just walk, just walk. My veins get pronounced. And walking takes a kind of tactile acuity with my toes. Fall and quickly stand. I turn my head behind the bus stop wall and vomit in the trash can quickly so no one notices. I clench, so I don’t shit my pants.
I walk across the parking lot to the gas station with a Baskin-Robbins, and I buy ice cream (pralines and cream) to try to look and smell normal. I buy a razor and shave in the porta-potty to look younger.
The auditory hallucinations become scary. They go from noises to songs to voices. I try to sleep when I finally close my eyes. Just try. The voices say worse things. They are equally unhelpful. Her voice plays on repeat.
This is fiction, but everything actually happened. I may have a few details wrong. I can tell you the color of the vomit. It was oily and almost yellow, and some of it came out of my nose. Its viscosity made me consider my condition. Opaque mucous means slow down, but stop at your discretion. Green-yellow is the rot on a scab. Be aware of it. Take action if it turns black.
Iʻm still who I was
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value, and it’s why you wrongfully think that I do not have any, that I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political. I know how to get what I want. In that world, I only knew resilience and survival. I ate people I didn’t like or who I thought were unhelpful. I would sabotage your metaphorical bungee cord and return your smile when you jumped. I’m much, much softer now, but there are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.