Who wakes up next to you
This is where I'll leave your note.
The first one I ever received was pinned to my shirt. It was yellow construction paper, cut out into the shape of a school bus. "832" was written on it in one of the eight most important colors that exist in the world, according to Crayola.
You're still one of the 8 most influential people in my world, according to every woman I've loved since last we spoke.
The first note I gave wasn't folded cleverly. I didn't learn how to do that until well into my teen years, when I had a reason to do the cute little tucks and tails. To her credit, she didn't laugh, but the subtle shake of her head was indication enough that the words she would use after reading would be empty attempts at mollification or hollow apology.
It's alright, though. Because later, I found someone worth walking 500 miles for.
Until she wasn't.
The note I found at your apartment, it wasn't mine to find. It was an accident, really. I wasn't looking for it, but there it was. It spelled out in clumsy verse, in my best friend's handwriting, words that I knew in my heart but hadn't yet seen with my eyes.
You were gone, and he was with you.
Not me.
Until he wasn't.
Oh, I am now fine. I wasn't fine. I didn't think I would ever be, but, well. Time heals, and all that. And wow, it's been a lot of time. A lot of todays between you and me and then.
A problem of mine, though, is that I linger. I still bleed a little when the trees move from green to smokeless flicker-flame. It's spring now, but everything turns to autumn when I remember you.
So this is where I leave the bloody trail, smeared for everyone to see and experience along with me. Pictographs written in clear language with unclear resolutions, red-fading-to-rust, scrawled for pondering and perusing.
I think the issue here is the time of year. I don't love the spring and all its promise, because promises get broken. Fall doesn't lie, it lies in wait. It's coolness is fact instead of false hope. Frost is a guarantee instead of a final, rude surprise. Spring gives way to hazy days, but autumn gives way to lazier days, shorter in duration and sepia around the edges of afternoons. Each morning stumbles in from the dark, shaky and a little weak.
We've force-Marched into April, but you always remind me of October. Fall.
I tripped, once. Fell. Landed hard, battered and bruised and bitter.
The bruises have faded, I think. The bitterness sometimes slips away into more of a bittersweet.
Which brings me to today.
This is where I'll leave your note.
I'm sorry. I can't say I didn't mean to bring you fear, anxiety, worry. I meant to give you those things. I wanted you to feel those things. I did that to you. I wish I hadn't done that; it was hurtful and hateful and born of spite and resentment and resistance to inevitable change.
I was absolutely withered. Everything good and right and just had been chewed up and what was left in me was envious and angry. I was poisonous and miserable, and I wanted poison and misery visited on you, too. I'd been done to, and I wanted to do. I spoke in anger, I spoke with hatred. Fury was my world, and our worlds were parted.
My emotions ruled me, and I should have done better.
You told me you were afraid, and I was appalled. I was aroused. I was proud and I was ashamed and I was disgusted and I was pleased.
Mostly, though, I was saddened.
I never wanted you to fear me, but you did. You were afraid of me because of me. I should have done better. I should have been better.
I have done better since then. I learned from us. You taught me. You taught me so much, and only now can I see the lessons written those decades ago. The words are the same, but now they convey different meaning, like shadows flickering in different light.
I've channeled the anger. I've funneled the pain, I've processed the emotions, I've done better with others. There are scars, there are aches, but they're stories and allegories and ways to learn and do better. Be better.
I am better.
I wish you'd see me. I wish we could talk; I wish laughter was our language.
These things can't happen, because there's no bridge to be built. The ashes all floated downstream decades ago. I understand that, and I respect the borders and the boundaries and the barriers. We're worlds apart now, with the light of years between.
Me leaving things alone is the best case for you and for me and for us.
I'd like you to forgive me.
I'm pretty sure you've forgotten me.
I know it's best that I stay here on my side of the world, so I'll leave a note here for you. A note for autumn in the spring, a note for a deciduous love that tries to be evergreen when 'what if' wanders in and whispers poison.
In maudlin moments, I wish you could know I want to walk those 500 miles that separate us, just to be the man you once thought I was. When clarity sharpens my focus on the here and the now, though, I realize how lucky I am to not wake up next to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ6wJqaE6o4
Non-fiction
I threw my phone onto my nightstand, at least I thought I did, as I heard it vibrating against the floor.
“Oh my god! Jared leave me alone”, I said out loud.
It’s been two weeks since our breakup and he won’t stop. He isolated me from the world in every way he could think of. Then decided to leave me when he finally siphoned all that he could from me. The aftermath is this version of myself, so mentally, emotionally and physically drained.
Despite this breakup being long overdue, it’s still a shock to my system.
I throw the blanket off of me and slowly edge off the bed. Although my first instinct was to kick my phone out of my way, I bent down and grabbed it.
Ready to rip my hair out, I sat down at my desk and pulled my laptop out of the drawer. I couldn’t help but to feel hate for him, as I opened it and realize the screen was cracked.
“You’re broken just like me”, I said to my laptop.
I held the button in, hoping I could use this. Surprisingly, I could make this work. I looked at my reflection in the screen of the laptop. All of the cracks embedded into the glass, eerily stretched along the area of my face’s reflection. Tears slowly fell from my eyes as if they were leaky faucets, unable to stop.
Without thinking I grabbed my phone and blocked Jared’s number and anyone’s number associated with him.
Unrelenting grief, tightly has a hold on me.
For those late nights and the words that never came to be.
Turn it Up
… turn it up!
Those quietly spoken words follow Ed King’s first, meticulous little guitar riff in the original recording of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I clearly remember riding with my father in his pickup truck back when I was in the fourth or fifth grade (which, by the way, was a long, long time ago). It was the first time I remember hearing the song. Ronnie Van Zant’s words, “turn it up,” rattled in to us from the WANV radio station where my mother worked through the truck’s static-y, AM speakers. I remember watching in awe as my father’s hand subconsciously reached for the volume button. The singer of the song had asked my dad to “turn it up,” and the old man was actually doing it? It was both a mystery, and a revelation at once. My father liked to make it known that he had no use for what he called “hippie music,” yet here he was, “turning it up“ on command. Furthermore, as he was “turning it up” with the one hand his other one was tapping out the beat atop the steering wheel. And even more uncharacteristically yet, Pop was singing along with the chorus!
”Sweet home Alabama
where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama,
Lord I’m coming’ home to you.”
My father wasn’t big on singing, though he liked music well enough, Hee-Haw mostly, yet he somehow recognized this song well enough that he could sing along in parts. I’d only ever heard my dad attempt to sing a few times, and then he was more likely to be singing along with The Statler Brothers, or maybe The Temptations, some of his favorites. What can I say? The old man was partial to harmonies. At least I come by that right.
Yea, Pop!… turn it up!
I would learn later in life that while recording the song, what Ronnie was actually doing was asking the song’s producer to give him more sound in his headset before he started singing. “I need more volume,” he was telling Al Kooper. Upon hearing the recorded playback Al wanted to edit the words out, but Ronnie stopped him. Ronnie knew he had a great song, and he knew that kids listening in their cars would do exactly what he’d just been telling Al Kooper to do, and conversely what my father had done. Those kids would “turn it up!” And, as usual, Ronnie Van Zant’s instincts were spot on.
Speaking of instincts, less than a week before that recording session Ronnie had called Al up in the middle of the night. “I need some studio time,” he’d told Al. “We’ve got this song, and it’s perfect right now. If we wait the song is gonna change. They always do. We need to record it right now.” So The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band took the long bus ride to Doraville, Georgia, where they laid out their soon-to-be rock and roll classic nearly a full year before the rest of the album was cut. Apparently it paid to follow along with Ronnie’s instincts.
… turn it up, Al!
The funny thing about the song though is what I learned from my dad that day in his pickup truck. Sweet Home Alabama appeals to nearly everyone. While the song is unmistakably rock-n-roll, it somehow manages to take a savvy listener on a four and a half minute southern musical odyssey. The airy, initial pluckings of Ed King’s guitar have a blue-grassy sound, being almost mandolin-ish, while Gary’s country, slide guitar accompanies it. The rhythm section which follows in behind those guitars only complements that bluegrass sound with a slow, very steady, stand-up bass feeling. When Ronnie’s voice joins in it is light and articulate, coming off as being almost untrue to his redneck persona. When the Honkettes (JoJo, Leslie and Cassie) join Ronnie in the chorus their harmonies bring in an almost hymnal quality, their “ooohs and aaah’s“ raining down from the holier, upper pews. The guitar solos are steeped heavily in the Memphis blues, and the sprinkling in of boogie-woogie piano finishes it all off. The music itself is very nearly the coming together of all the great, southern musical styles into one pop-rock perfection.
And then you have the lyrics. Home is what the song is about. It tells you right there in the title. The song is about home, about wanting to be home after a long stint on the road, and about loving one’s home, warts and all. Yes, the song was inspired by Neil Young’s song “Southern Man”, and yes Ronnie takes a pretty good dig at Neil Young in the second verse, but that is all in loving one’s home, and in refusing to see it disparaged by someone who isn’t even American, much less southern. “Fix your own house before you stick your nose into mine,” Ronnie fairly enough reminds Neil Young, “A southern man don’t need you around, anyhow!” It was the early 1970’s, a time when it was already rightfully difficult being southern, but no weed-smoking, sandal-wearing Canadian had any business piling on, did he? Young had tried it twice now, beating up on southerner’s, but not again he wouldn’t. And the funniest thing about it was, Ronnie wasn’t even from Alabama. But even though he never lived there Ronnie felt a kinship to her people, people who were sharing the same struggles that his folks over in north Florida were.
“Big wheels keep on turning.
Carry me home to see my kin.
Singing songs about the southland.
I miss Alabamy once again (and I think it’s a sin, yea).”
For fifty years now I’ve rocked out to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I’ve heard it hundreds of times, maybe thousands, and I still “turn it up” every time it comes on, my toes instinctively tapping along to the radio. I heard it at the end of Forrest Gump, when Jenny and Forrest had become “like peas and carrots once again.” Reese Witherspoon made a whole movie out of “Sweet Home Alabama.“ The song has been covered by just about everyone; to include Nirvana, Rihanna, Poison, and Justin Bieber. Kidd Rock wrote a tribute song about this song that was a response to another song. I’ve heard symphony's attempt it, and marching bands, and even a bagpipe ensemble. I live in Nashville, where you cannot to this day walk down Broad Street without hearing it blare from at least one live music bar, and more often then not from two or three at once.
Oh yea. I’ve heard Neil Young do the song he inspired too (and he did it with much respect, too. Thank you for that, Friend).
Hey Neil! ... turn it up!
After much careful consideration about this prompt I have decided that “Sweet Home Alabama” has what it takes to be the “Soundtrack of my life” (which is not a mantle easily bestowed). It is not my favorite song. It is not even my favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song, and may not even be my favorite song on its own album, Second Helping, which also boasts Curtis Loew and Swamp Music. But I am choosing it due to it’s popularity, and because the song is very nearly everything I believe I am while also managing to remain relevant for nearly as long as I have been around to hear it. The song is upbeat, straight shooting, contemplative, artistically diverse, it features a fantastic arrangement of driving guitar work, and it brings some attitude along to boot. Those are the very things I am about. That description happily meets me out there afloat somewhere on the big, slowly rolling river that is the Dixieland Twelve Bar Blues.
So take a tip from me, Ronnie, Al, Neil, and my old man. The next time you hear those light, plucky strings followed by Ronnie's suggestion that you, “turn it up,“ don’t just sit there...
Reach for the damned dial, already!
..…
Squeaky Hinges
I want to laugh at her. I want to be able to say something condescending and horrible and shrug this all off. But in that moment, sitting there almost nervous and embarrassed, telling me I was the first person to ever share the night with her and have the privilege of sharing her morning too, I could feel my heart clenching so violently I could almost mistake it for love.
She tells me this over coffee- stale and tasting of the burnt bottom of the kettle and soake up by store bought shortbread I scrounged out from the back of the cupboard. I wince at the charred flavour from one morning that she had sleepily brewed it twice. She scowls as she listens to the cupboard squeak shut from when I never oiled the hinges.
Yes, I could almost mistake it for love.
But that would mean it had ever left. That it hadn't left an indent around my bones and organs. The velvet carress of petals where the many vices of thorns had left me scarred over the years. Where my words were washed and pressed and folded until they lifted.
God if I couldn't feel it thundering in my chest and pounding in my head like it wanted so desperately to be released from my throat and whispered in that bitch's ear.
But that's just the dose of her poison, isn't it? I am soothed by the blanket of A4 paper and the familiar clack of well worn but long neglected keys. Weren't things that were loved meant to change? To be supported? To squeak from time, like old bones?
The vulnerability that my bastard ex-wife had been trying so desperately to feign was displayed in cracked paint held in the body of metal on my desk, and the feeling of purging my words without judgement let me know I wasn't alone in whatever we were connected by.
My ex told me she didn't like my laugh- how it squeaked and how the box springs on my side were too loud. My typewriter never says such things, kissing my fingertips and begging for more and more and-
Well, my mother in law believes there's another woman.
We are inextricably interlinked; despite how resolute I've been told to act like we aren't.
Human
What a fascinating thing, humans.
There are 8 billion of them, and yet they're all so different. They see someone on the bus, that they will never see again and worry about what they will think.
How many people do you think live with the same insecurity? So when they see people dancing on the skytrain it is commonplace to find them strange, with a collective conscience.
Have you ever seen the slight smile of someone after they’ve said something they’ve found hilarious, as they await their friend's reactions? As they wait for them to tack on bits of story lore?
Have you ever seen the crinkles in the forehead of someone so dedicated to their passion that it becomes an involuntary reflex?
Oh, to be human. To kiss someone and watch as they flush.
To gift your loved one you have fallen out with something special that makes their entire body light up.
To drink with family, and share secrets you haven’t since you were a child.
Oh how I long to be human again.
Personal Love Affair
I want someone who I can take a photo with, flushed and brilliant in a mall booth that I can tuck away into the billfold of my wallet. I want someone who I’ll pull up beside, roll the window down and with the widest smile call them darlin’. I want someone I can snatch flowers from the road to tuck in their hair, and someone I can tug by the belt loops so our hips are flush and I can count the sun given freckles across their skin.
The words are sticky in my head. Coagulated and unable to seperate beneath the thick, viscous liquor running rampant in my blood. I want to lay on someone’s chest, and feel the exhaustion sweep over me like a touch until it thins me like confectionary spread too thin on bread.
But if the only one who can ever love me is myself, that is okay. I put my hand on my chest, and the one thing- the thing that has been with me my entire life thrums against my palm. And I feel it. That love— so pure, and raw despite the scarred exterior that just grows rougher the more lines on my face I develop.
And I feel warm. Because I am so much love. And that love is for me.
Nails
There’s something so intimidating about returning to writing after a hiatus. Over the years I’ve had so many thoughts and ideas, so many instances where I’d say to myself, “this would make a great piece, I need to write this down.” I’ve had to push those ideas into the corners of my brain. Yet for some reason, I want this little memoir to be better than the things I’ve written in the past, even though I’ve been out of practice since the start of my marriage.
My husband hated this hobby of mine. When we were dating, he saw it as more of a distraction for me; I would sit outside in a cute little sundress, with my pink notebook and a pen with a flower on the end. At night I would take my pink notebook over to the typewriter and let my long, painted nails tap away. It was something for me to do while he was at “work,” that is, when he was playing around on GarageBand. But, as time went on, I was getting publications and paychecks, while no musicians wanted to work with his “original sounds,” (the premade noises that come free with the installation arranged in a random order).
He decided that the reason why he wasn’t able to come up with anything amazing is because I don’t support him enough. I should be out working a real job, not just sitting around writing all day, so we could afford the premium GarageBand noises and better internet for him to get no emails faster. I should also be cooking for him, the processed food we’ve been eating is definitely stunting his creativity. And obviously I need to be doing his chores so he has time to focus.
One thing led to another, and suddenly I was living a life where it was impossible for me to express myself. My pink notebook was fed to the fireplace and the typewriter, this typewriter, was put in my husband's office, where his watchful eye constantly was. I don’t exactly know how it all happened, but I’ll make sure to ask my case worker at my next session.
The important thing is, I have my typewriter back, and I’m eager to get started. But do I even know how to write anymore? The fireplace ate my old ideas, and I’ve spent the last few years suppressing all of my new ones. I’m worried that I’ve lost my connection to the words, to the world, to this typewriter. It’s impossible to revive something when it’s been burned into ashes.
But the typewriter reassures me. As I sit here, tapping away with my short, bare nails, it’s talking to me, cheering me on. The faster I type, the louder it becomes. I may not remember every idea I’ve had that was lost, but my typewriter remembers me. It hugs my fingers in a way that feels like a lifelong friend embracing me.
I can’t wait to talk to my old friend about everything that went on, about my husband’s unfair treatment, about how I’ve missed them.
Wasted
Wasted. One whole year, wasted.
How many hours could I have spent doing what I wanted to do? How much closer could I be to a finished product, a project that might actually get published? How close could I have been to my dream career? How many ideas did I ignore, discarded because they were less important, less worthy of my time?
And what do I have to show for it? For a year, I told myself it was worth it. For the man who supposedly loved me, it was worth setting aside my passion. I traded my lifelong goals for eternal happiness. So I thought. And now? Now, I have nothing but bad memories, feminine rage, and a sour taste in my mouth.
How could I have been so stupid? So naïve? How could I ever have thought some guy was worth all that? Did I want my happily ever after so badly that I was willing to sacrifice the person I want to be? To sacrifice myself for some guy?
Never again. I’ve been away from my desk for too long, but I won’t make that mistake again. This is who I am. This is who I want to be. Who I will be. My loves will be flowing prose, detailed narration, interesting characters, snappy dialog, engaging stories. Stories about adventure, longing, excitement, love. Love lost. Love found. Love cherished more than life itself. Love that lasts forever.
Why do I have to be such a romantic?
Crater
Kill me slowly with your kisses sweet like antifreeze. Poison me, drown me, watch me suffer as I die but be the one holding me under and dosing my drinks.
I can't say the words, not when I've just accepted the size and shape of Love in its many forms so personally that giving it the use of my own vocal chords to sing the sorts of praises that would make even Tennyson squirm is simply unacceptable.
Her Love is an anvil, heavy and solid and made to be built upon. My Love is a hydrogen bomb, disastrous ruination meant to end life and crater the earth. But maybe, my love will simper. be something she could cradle in her hands and not burn from the intensity of it. Maybe, in another life. Another time.
Anytime, really.
Sound Tracks
I used to burst at the seams. My tears ran hot, like blood dripping down an open cut. I sang a song that made me feel at home, and foreign in my own skin, all at once.
I am strong, I repeated to myself. I have values I'd like to uphold. Covid hit, I was yelled at inside a Whole Foods for not following security guidelines. I touched a "dirty basket" and was ostracized. I felt unsafe. I wore an N-95, was made fun of by a conservative guy. Such was life.
The song I sang isn't important. It isn't important for a lot of reasons. The first being: isn't music just an extension of our psyches? Shouldn't it all be celebrated, and not told to follow the rules like a society in ruins?
You touched a dirty basket, said security. Judgement day looks a lot like 2020.
The song made me smile. I am strong, I repeated to myself. I have values I'd like to uphold. I made it through, to the modern day. And I have only luck - and maybe a vaccine - to thank.
The song made me resilient. It reminded me of Taylor Swift - please don't stop reading this. I wanted to feel whole, to be well, to have a mind that didn't rattle like loose glass in a window.
The song made me notice life, in its entirety. It was like a grammatically correct essay, a gun with all its bullets, a lake with swans and full of secret meaning, ecstasy.
It was a way out in a broken environment, a healing touch, a prophecy. Should I keep going? Or is music heard only when it's listened to, and not merely described by a poor writer?
I still feel warm and fuzzy when listening to it. I press my fingers to my temples, bless the feeling, put the "dirty" behind me.