I thought it went away
I thought it went away,
they said it would,
the heart that squeezes
bleeding tears
as memories
of joys and sorrows
little hurts
and big dreams
flood the mind
shared moments
when you were
still
and I could call
or visit
or write
and know
you would be there
with smiles
and hugs
and laughter
and love;
I thought it went away,
and I could face each day
with you tucked safely
deeply
in a corner of my mind
ache softened
dulled
by the passing years
growing older
than you ever were
and away
from when
our lives
entwined;
I thought it went away.
But then yesterday,
--was it an old song?
the huge full moon
as I drove home from work?
nature dressed in fall colors
under the clear, blue sky?
a joke that would have made you laugh?--
I picked up the phone
~I picked up the phone~
to share a silly nothing,
but there's no number to dial
that you will answer
and I can no longer hear
the echo of your voice
and your only smiles
are in fading pictures
and our only hugs
are the ones I give myself
wearing your sweater
full of holes
falling to pieces
like me
after all this time
I thought it went away,
grief;
I was mistaken.
You Never Go Away
Lately your scent has been following me,
lingering when I need it the least.
Your smile haunts my dreams,
making me happy in ways I can't describe-
until I wake up.
I thought the dreams of you were gone for good,
that the images of the two of us
would stop flashing in my mind,
teasing me about what could have been.
I thought I was done missing you.
I wasn't.
Temporary
I thought it had gone away,
Had flown like a bird
Migrating to warmer climes
One day here, the next day departed
Leaving just a faint impression
That swiftly faded away
That it had ever been here at all.
My step was light, my heart warm
The sun glinted off leaves
And even rain brought only
Bands of colour to the sky
Suddenly time stretched
An expanse of exciting opportunity
The world felt like a mum hug
I baked, I wrote, I sewed
I read grand works of historical fiction
I napped and sipped tea
Poetry flowed forth
And I sketched dogs and cats
Walked in fields of flowers
And felt a glowing peace
But it returned uninvited
Unexpected, untimely, unwished
The shock felt yet more keenly
From it's too-short absence
A marauder with no code
With no-one else to torment
Tailor-made for me
I awoke heavy with dull eyes
And slow thoughts
I moved through treacle
The sun's rays held no warmth
It would not reach me
Below my thickly wrapped
Cloak of shame
Can a Jilter and His Jilted Make Music Again?
I saw my old banjo case
in the back of my closet,
where for years it languished
with the instrument inside.
I recalled the day we split
and I gave my heart to a guitar.
Something moved me to brush away
the dust, and I hauled that old case
into the bedroom where the banjo
and I long ago made music
together. I opened the lid
and gazed upon my old love.
She was as I remembered her.
The wooden neck I used to cradle
was still a dull, faded brown.
The frets in front were worn down.
The five steel strings were frayed
and no doubt needed tuning.
As I so gently lifted
my ex out of her dark grave
I noticed the marks still etched
into the light synthetic head--
flaws made by my errant
fingerpicks scarring her beauty.
I recalled her patience
as this beginner slowly learned
how to treat her properly,
how to make bluegrass music,
how to introduce her to jams.
But all that was in the past.
Could lost love be rekindled?
I had to find out, so I slid
my picks onto my left pointer,
middle finger and thumb.
With my hands in their old places,
I tried to revive our magic.
Hesitantly, pick by pick,
our very first song together
slowly emerged. “Cripple Creek.”
I paused to savor the moment.
Time apart did not destroy love.
My muscle mem’ry was still there.
Health renewed
Two years ago, I stood at what I believed was the twilight of my health and fitness, thinking those vibrant, energetic days were long behind me. The passage of time had settled into my early 40s, and I began to accept that the vitality I once knew had slipped away, like a fading echo of youth. But over the past 24 months, a transformation has taken place—a quiet, determined resurgence of strength and spirit. Through dedication, mindful nourishment, and a renewed relationship with my body, I’ve rekindled a fire I thought had long been extinguished.
Now, in what should have been the beginning of the slow steady decline, I find myself at the height of my physical prowess, feeling stronger, sharper, and more alive than ever before. It is as if time itself has bent to the force of my will, revealing that the boundaries of age are far more flexible than I had ever imagined. What was once thought to be lost has blossomed anew, and I am living proof that one’s peak is not dictated by the years, but by the passion and effort poured into each moment.
Spilling The Tea
“Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.” - Agatha Christie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Despite the general consensus against flying, he looked forward to the “me time”; watching movies, eating, and sleeping while being attended to. Not today.
He had not eaten a single meal, and was looking forward to meeting his mates, after almost four decades. He asked for an orange juice, adjusted the headphones, and pulled the blanket up to his neck.
Spinning the clock back in his mind, he smiled. It had been a daily ritual of sorts at the local chai-wallah, the owner known simply as 'Uncle'. His mob of teenagers would leave the place either when ‘Uncle’ closed for the day, or when their banter was exhausted. Usually, it was the former.
At the time, it seemed like they would grow old together, in the same time and place. Even when their career paths diverged, they continued the soirée unabated. Jabber of playing Cricket turned to discussing the game, there being no time left to play from the pursuit of happiness, a la Economics.
Daily catch-ups turned to weeklies until the span stretched to months and geographies. Videoconferencing provided a fun alternative but the novelty wore off. Promises to sync again diluted and broke. After reviving connections on socials, he had suggested a meetup and was almost in tears when the mob agreed en masse.
After landing, and navigating the usual drills at the airport, he hailed a cab, and settled back to enjoy the nostalgia rushing past as the driver made his way to the destination, replete with honking, cursing, and breaking traffic rules. He would catch up with his buddies before heading home to see his family.
When he alighted at the rendezvous spot, he had to stretch for a bit. The ride had taken its toll on his lower back and it was something he didn't miss from the old days when a rough ride was part of everyday life.
His friends, now balding and graying, not unlike himself, were as welcoming as he could remember. They hugged him and complimented him on his physique; quite the contrast from their sagging chests and growing bellies.
“Foreign countries keep you fit, yaar. Everyone is into exercise and fitness!” One of his mates teased him.
“Arrey, I ask you what is the need to struggle with exercise at this age? Who's going to a Mr. India contest, huh? Enjoy life!” Another shared his philosophy.
He just laughed along because he was happy to be back in their company, and at Uncle's.
“Hey buggers,” he finally asked, “Where's the chai?”
“You still remember, no? Bugger’s not changed a bit that way!”
“Of course I remember.” He laughed. “Now, let's order a round or five.”
“No more Uncle's chai, man. He was bought over by that big American cafe chain!”
“What? No.”
“Ya! Hey, but they make a good latte, okay?”
I Thought The Fighting Was Over
I thought the fighting was over. I thought that even if I hadn’t killed those demons; I at least laid them to rest. Last winter I found myself staring at pictures that my son drew in school as my wife sat upstairs contemplating the future of our marriage. I’d said so many times that things would change, that the words became meaningless. They did as much as good as a man spitting on a wildfire. So, I said, “If you’ll stay, I’ll start doing therapy. I’ll work on myself. Just give me a little bit of time.” She reluctantly agreed.
So, a few days later, I locked myself in the spare room, staring at a screen with an old man from southern California, who spoke slowly as though every word meant just as much as the last. He carried a thin smile throughout his introductory speech, letting me know it was alright to laugh, and it was alright to say anything. This was indeed a safe space.
“I can’t stop fighting with my wife.” I said the first day. “I don’t know what it is, but we can’t seem to stand each other anymore.”
“Why do you think that is?” He asked.
“Partly because of my temper, and partly because I feel that she’ll forever play the victim.”
“Now, that’s interesting. Could you elaborate on the playing the victim part?”
I felt bad, almost nauseated, and I wanted to just exit the screen and take off. Just go for a drive somewhere, one of those long therapeutic drives with no destination. But, if I did that, she’d leave, and she’d take the kids with her. Whether that was the best reason for staying, I don’t know. But the house was too big, and full of life. Sitting in it, by myself in the deep quietness of solitary confinement, felt like enough to blow my head clean off. The noise, though it drove me mad sometimes, also kept me breathing.
“Well, uh, look, I love my wife. But every argument we’ve ever gotten into has ended with me saying that I’ll fix myself. That I’ll go to therapy. That I’ll stop getting mad about sex. That I’ll stop getting mad about everything, and just once, I’d love her to say, hey, I’ll work on me too. But she won’t, because in her mind, she has nothing to work on. She just married some kind of sick sadistic asshole, who makes one right move for every 50 wrong ones. And it’s hard. Call it narcissism, call it whatever you want, but I don’t feel like she’s a sweet angel with a halo hovering above her head, and I just come home from work looking to wreak havoc on her and my family. And I feel like the only way our marriage will ever stand the test of time is if I just become an obedient dog. Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am, sure, ma’am. And I think if I tried that, I’d eventually go off like a fucking atomic bomb. So, I guess I’m here wondering, what on earth should I do?”
And from there, we went back and forth for months. Me and a 75-year-old man from California, with a lifetime’s worth of stories and regrets, but a lifetime’s worth of perseverance and seeking answers to all those questions that seemed devoid of them. He was an inspiration to me, because he put things into perspective.
“Do you think that you’re relying on her too much for your own happiness?” He asked me.
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Well, you say that you get angry if she doesn’t want to have sex, or if she doesn’t want to spend time with you when the kids go to bed. Does it make you angry because you don’t have a Plan B that just involves yourself?”
I thought about that for a moment.
And it was like a revelation.
“I think you’re right,” I said.
That same smile appeared on his weathered face.
“Look,” he said. “I’m not here to say that she doesn’t have things to work on, right? But we’re here for you. We’re here because you took that giant leap to speak with a stranger about things that you don’t speak to anyone about. That takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage to seek help, and to stop fooling yourself into believing that all of life’s hardships can be solved alone inside our own heads. Fools think that way, and fools drown themselves. But, I do think that there are dependency issues at work here. Issues that stem possibility from a time early on when you were attached at the hip. But the years go on and a natural drift starts to appear. Some deal with that better than others. But tell me, what do you like to do? Something that doesn’t involve another soul. Something that you could do, if like an episode of the Twilight Zone, everyone disappeared off the face of the earth. What would you do?”
“I like to write. I want to write a book. I like to play guitar and listen to my records too.”
“Do you do those things?”
“Not as much as I should.”
“Well, the next time plans with your wife don’t go as planned, take yourself out of the situation and go do those things. Unburden yourself, become more independent and seek happiness and validation from yourself, and yourself alone.”
And I did that. And it worked for a while. There were no major changes in our marriage, but I felt myself becoming less bothered by things that would have normally upset me. I played my guitar more, and that winter, I even wrote a full draft for a short story collection that eventually got published.
There was a power in independence. One that I suppose I’d forgotten about.
But the other day there was a misstep and again the verbal bullets flew. This time it started over a head cold. Yeah, you read that right. A fucking head cold. We were doing dishes together after supper, and she sniffled and said, “I’m tired of being sick.”
And I responded, “You’re always sick.” And as an added joke, I said, “I don’t really even believe that you’re sick. I believe you believe you’re sick.” A stupid joke, but a joke nonetheless.
We finished the dishes, and she went upstairs to use the bathroom. She’d been talking about taking a bath before the kids went to bed, and I said, “Oh, by the way, if you want to take a bath, go right ahead.”
Then I noticed she was crying a little, and I said, “What’s going on?”
She turned with sadness and annoyance in her eyes and said, “You really hurt my feelings.”
“About what?”
“About not believing that I was sick. I am sick. And it hurts my feelings when you don’t believe me. You think I’m just making it up?”
“It was a joke.” I said, and she stormed off into the kitchen.
I could feel that temper flushing in my cheeks. And I hated that feeling. My hands became clammy, and my heart pounded, almost as though my appendages and organs knew a fight was going to happen before it happened. And it was Friday, not even two hours into the weekend, and I was already having a premonition about a full two days of ignoring each other. A full weekend of trying to not let the kids see what was happening. But they’re getting older now, and I suppose that cat’s been out of the bag for a while.
I followed her into the kitchen where she cried some more, and I could have been sympathetic, should have been sympathetic, but anger was winning the battle of emotions.
“Why do you get to do this?” I asked. “Both kids in the living room and you’re going to have a full meltdown. Do you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to get upset and cry and hole yourself up somewhere and I’m going to have to go out and act like everything is normal with the kids. Is that it? You’re 31 years old. I think it’s time to get over having your feelings hurt over a stupid joke.”
“Jesus, you’re not sympathetic. You don’t care about me.”
“Do you think you’re sympathetic to me? When I threw my back out a couple months ago, what did you do? I couldn’t fucking breathe and you laughed your head off. What happened when my balls were so swollen, I couldn’t walk and I thought I had goddamn cancer? What did you do? You laughed. You stood over the bed and laughed at me. And yeah, fine whatever, it’s okay to make light of situations like that, but man, you have some nerve to tell me I don’t care about you because I made a joke. It was a goddamn joke.”
Then she went from the kitchen to the bathroom, getting ready to slam the door in my face. I stopped it, and she screamed.
“GET OUT OF MY FACE AND LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“You don’t get to do this.” I said. “Over a head cold.”
Then she slapped the bathroom wall, screaming as loud as she could now. How did we get here? Jesus Fuck, how did we get here?
“THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS FUCKING ABOUT!”
Then she approached me, moving faster than I’ve seen her move in the twelve years that we’d been together. Her nose flush against my nose, like she was getting ready to knock my head off.
“Are you trying to fight me? Are you going to hit me?” I asked.
The world was going red. The screaming and the fact that the kids were hearing it all. No longer than ten minutes ago, had you asked me how my marriage was going? I would have said, right as rain, man. Everything’s fine. Groovy.
How does it get here? Why is my wife staring at me like she hates me more than anyone else on God’s green earth? And why couldn’t I have just been more sympathetic? Sorry, you’re feeling sick. Boom. Crisis averted. Do you want me to go get you some cold medicine? Boom. I’m in her good graces now. I’m beginning to look a little like a hero.
She slammed the door of the bathroom. The noise reverberated throughout the house. And I was depleted. The anger quickly liquidizing into sadness. The walk of shame to the living room where my kids sat playing Minecraft.
They were deep into their games and, for a shadow of a moment, I thought they heard nothing. They didn’t pay attention. But that proved to be wrong. Of course, the goddamn house shook. No way they didn’t hear that.
And it was one of those moments that I’d felt several times throughout the course of my marriage. A deep discomfort in my own skin, in the world around me, wanting to run somewhere but not wanting to leave the kids behind.
Something people don’t talk about, or at least not that I’ve heard, is the difficulties in the aftermath of a blowout when you have kids. You see, when we first met, if we fought, I’d leave. Easy peasy. We’d both get our space. I’d go for a walk downtown to a coffee shop, grab a seat near the back and sit in silence until the screams of anger inside my head tired themselves out, and then I’d return. At the same time, she’d get to be alone, and we’d have crucial hours to think about what had just transpired.
But when you have kids, you can’t run away and leave your partner to take care of both of them because you’re having a tantrum. You need to parent. You always need to parent.
As soon as I sat down, my daughter asked. “Why were you and mommy screaming at each other?”
Ouff, a deep pain in my heart. An arrow right through it.
“We just got a little mad at each other. I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“Were you being mean to her?”
Another dagger.
“I guess so.” Unsure of what to say, I added. “Do you guys want to go for a walk?”
They both leaped up off the couch and screamed in unison. “YEAHH!” And it made me both happy and sad because I realized I should do this more often, not just when I need to run away from life for a while, and happy that they wanted to be with me.
“Can I say bye to mom?” my daughter asked.
“Sure.” I said, and she went over to the bathroom and knocked on the door. She said bye and came back out to say that mommy was sad and she was sitting in the dark. I prayed these memories wouldn’t stick, but I had similar ones from a similar age, and I figured they would too. These memories weren’t going anywhere.
It was a chilly October evening, and the sun was going down in the next hour or so. Not that I thought we lived in a particularly shady part of town, but it was close to downtown and there were some characters that roamed those streets at night. So, I told them just a quick loop around the block and we’d have to go back home. Though at that moment, I could have walked to the edge of the earth.
We went up the street to the mailbox first and it was nothing but election junk mail. We walked back down to the house, and I threw it all in the recycling bin, then we kept going down towards the park along the edge of the river.
I apologized to the kids multiple times, making myself sound like a broken record.
"I don’t want you guys to hear mommy and daddy yelling at each other. I hate that you
hear it, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
"It's okay, daddy," they both said.
I could feel a lump forming in my throat. They deserved better, and I was always sure that they were lucky to have me, that no other father could hold a candle to me. Again, it was narcissism at its finest, but it lived protected behind a thick and what I thought was an indestructible barrier inside my head. But now, the great walls had fallen, and I thought at that moment that every father that ever roamed this shitty rock was better than me. Everyone was better than me.
We made our way to the parking lot of the high school and walked along a low stone wall. The kids making a game out of it. They talked about Minecraft. And told me about all the crazy things you could do in the game, and I told them I wanted to watch them play a little before bed because I was feeling like an old head. They lit up at this, and that made me feel better.
Sure, it was a nasty fight (are there any good ones?), but it was just a fight. And we’d persevere or we wouldn’t. But one thing that was as certain as a sunrise was that I’d always be a father. If I lost their mother, then it had to be, but I’d never lose them. I couldn’t.
I thought about the therapist from sunny California, and I thought about independence. And I told myself to be happy with myself. It was hard at that moment, as hard as it had ever been, but I said that once the kids went to bed, I’d watch a movie, maybe have a beer, and in the morning, maybe my wife and I could make things right, or maybe not. But I was going to enjoy my own company, and I would not let one bad evening unravel everything I’d worked so hard for.
I wasn’t going to just be an asshole who was mean. I was going to be better. I just needed to enjoy myself.
We continued our walk and when the sun set; we came back to the house. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
And for extra measure, I said one more time.
“I’m sorry, kids.”