You’re Dead to Me (In Memoriam)
Ah, the elegy.
Sometimes I think they’re all I ever do (you know, minus the meter). I look at each piece I write and, whatever the topic, in one way or another it always seems like some form of hat tip to something that’s gone. The flowers I rest by who or whatever’s headstone usually accompanied by a huge loogie I hock on their grave.
What can I say, I love the hybrid. I’m fascinated by it, the past, what it means, what we’re supposed to do with its leavings. And when anger’s involved, I don’t know, the mix of fragile beauty and biting ugliness seems so real to me. Idolatry and blasphemy. “I miss everything about you–except your stupid face.”
I even like the word. “Elegy.” Such a nice sound for such a sad sentiment.
Anyway. This one’s from February 12th, 2009. It’s called “The Year You Dyed and Were Reborn”
The Year You Dyed and Were Reborn
When I first saw you again I almost laughed.
Your hair, straight and black, was draped
like an iron curtain over your scalp. Here
was you; here
was the rest of the world.
Your eyes were the same; they still smiled in crescents
when I looked at you. One green, the other blue—
just like when you left.
And you still couldn’t hold back the desire to cry
just from seeing me again, remembering me again.
You never did say that you stopped loving me back then.
You only sobbed, as if you knew that doubt were enough
and you had to drive away to make yourself safe from me.
So you sipped your coffee
and shielded your building tears with squinting eyelids.
You were different now,
you told me. And I smirked and nodded,
remembering your hair when it was soft and brown,
not black,
not coarse from color and chemicals.
I imagined your transformation,
the way you must have emerged
from your porcelain white cocoon and spread
your loud and boisterous wings
as if they were more than wings.
I imagined the moment before it must have happened,
your old face in the mirror, your old hands
touching your hair the way I used to, trying hard
to imitate the pressure in my fingers.
You must have stared at yourself for a long time.
You were getting grey in strands and patches
and you knew you were too young for that.
I envisioned watery streaks shining down your cheeks
from the pale fluorescent light above the mirror;
your stomach turned and your unsteady hands held your head
under a faucet,
baptizing you, cleansing you
of the memories
that clung to your locks like tangles.
They hurt too much to pull at or touch.
You cut them. You painted them black.
And their absence
poked and prodded at my wanting chest
like a dream I couldn’t remember.
There you sat, under the brilliant water-colored sky,
looking strong, confident, and still so beautiful—
your eyes mocking the clouds
as if the black painted over your scalp
could keep God
from seeing inside your head,
or the sun
from shining on your face.
You said
that you were different now.
And the dusky sky, glowing as though by candlelight,
looked down at us
just before it faded, and the breeze
that moved through both of our hair
was warm and heavy—an exhausted sigh,
blowing out the sun
and saying its sad goodnight.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 5:26 pm and is filed under poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
