Natalie my friend.
Because you are you know. A real friend.
Though you lie beneath your roses now and I
feel as if I lie beneath them, with you.
For I am not as alive, once, twice, three times
as you ever were
you, who were beloved in life, you, who passed too soon, too well
into the light, beyond to your garden
where those who loved you and there were many
sat cross-legged waiting for you to tell a story
make us laugh, make us smile, radiate with your old world charm
for you were one of the last ones, the best generation
reminding me of my grandmother, those fine ladies of yester year
who did not have our mistakes and our errors, the Booming Boomers, befuddled Gen X kids, lost Millennial’s who
never quite learned, how to wake up early and brush their hair, until
it gleamed.
I keep your photo, I retain your last message to me, I have a quote on my
desk you wrote
and mindful always, you told me; Listen, don’t give a shit
don’t!
People will hate you, especially if you are good
it’s the way of the world, you told me, smell the roses, don’t give a damn
and don’t forget to swear copiously …
I have forgotten many things, my rule book is sabotaged, I keep making
the same mistakes, *stop it!* (say nothing, it’s safer!) I blunder as if I were a child sometimes, unsure
of the etiquette, not able to read minds and plunge my hands into
the mass of wriggling thought, to harness something tangible
I never understood humans ever so well (why are they so cold?)
their mascinations, their secret selves, it were as if being
an only-child I watched from the outside with bemusement
(or horror) (or incomprehension) why do they survive without needing
something? Someone? More than ego? Self-satisfaction? What
urges them to action? If not something meaningful?
One minute they would be saying, they loved me and the next
turning a cold shoulder, the variations, the deceptions, the quiet
subtext I did not relate to, what ever did they mean when
they went silent and I dropped like a dying star (autism is
more honest than what we deem normal, i’m certain)
out of their orbit? How to tell? What to care about? (I am
afraid of not mattering to anyone, and everything I do being futile, I don’t
want to go my entire life as lonely as now, with that hollow
fear inside my mouth, unable to come out, lodged deep
like a burrowing moth will press itself like unbidden velvet).
Natalie – – you said; Child, don’t care so much
for nobody cares as much as they say they do
unless God is watching and even then, they would be loved
without putting forth effort, they would have worship without
knowing the feel of ground skinned beneath their knees
few will truly care, this idea you will have a devotional
following, is only for the wicked and the vain, if you are lucky
I mean — really lucky
you may have friends you can count on one hand
who truly, when the chips are down, and before dawn has come
will turn to you and rise you up
from sickness, in health, in death, who will come and pay their respects?
I recall your funeral, how we passed down the long line
many were your contemporaries, women you said used to
criticize you for swearing overly, even accused you of making it up
about your mother, (surely her life wasn’t that hard!) but that’s why I love you, you said
for you believed me straight away and with the innocence
of children we came together, I had my first seventy year old friend
staying long at the coffin, flowers on top, clouds filled with rain as
if God were waiting until we passed, to let loose his tears
I didn’t believe in God, as you did, I did believe in you and you
were faithful and hypocritical like the best of us
a flawed, imperfect, relic of a human being with
magnificent hair and a dirty laugh.
I should have come visit more often, I said,
as we all say when someone meets their grave and the
smell of dirt is in our nostrils, time being as it is, so fickle
and short, and we, who are still young, think we are far
from this hour, not so far, not so far.
You told me, listen, forget what you’ve learned about
piety and mortality, people are beasts, the world is cruel
but if you can find someone who loves you, then hold on
for dear life, and do your best to help them through
for there is nothing sadder than loneliness in a room
full of people and there is nothing better than one hand
reaching for you in a crowd
pulling you out
into fresh air, where if we were the same age
I suspect I would have stood up to those who bullied you in
your thirties and told your mother to go hang when she
said she found you a disappointment
I know how that feels Natalie, we shared the same stories
forty years apart, when you were born I was not
still feel I am not, I miss you because
you were a riddle in a lesson in a riddle in a lesson and I
don’t meet people like you very often, nor have I in a long while
stood in your garden and smelt the roses, they bloom just
before the light you said, just before it begins to dawn and
that is when I would most like to close my eyes for the last time
and sleep forever.
On that day you died, I watched out of my window
for surely there would be a sign, something of you
gathering into the ether, if I took my glasses off and squinted
maybe I could see in the unyielding darkness a little of what
you spoke about, that stirring of Gods and tempests and
humans lost on their own gloat, people who exist without
giving a damn about, each other, or the basics of care, I never
understood, even if I were well versed as you, on parents who
didn’t really want (me) (us) (you) (I) (anything).
Last night I dreamed of going braless to the store and seeing
an old lover who stared at my chest the entire time, I dreamed
of boarding a plane with nobody on it, except waving oxygen masks
I dreamed of you and I dreamed of my mother
in the dream of you, you were walking through the rose
bushes and in time you were out of sight, and music I liked was
playing through an open window and I saw you take flight
and soon you were high in the sky and my eyes could no
longer follow your trajectory and I thought – – maybe I should
let go, but I don’t want to, I never have wanted to, I can’t
it isn’t in me to let go – – – (God I wish it were!) and the dream was about my mother
and she had always been gone and wasn’t there and
I was (holding her hair brush)
and I was (stepping into a lake)
and I was (still)
left behind to take these memories of people and sustain them
as if a bomb had obliterated everything but my recollection
be it real or wrong or scattered like pollen, I don’t know
I don’t know what to do Natalie, to be loved? Be glad of shrugging
them all and living in a cabin in the woods? Or to matter, to
be of consequence, like I felt with you. Was it because you were
old or just kind or just hurt or just battered by your own mother who
you said told you she had wished she had
a boy and not a girl and not you and not you and not you.
Why do the good ones die? Why will one day I watch them
throw flowers for my mother and long then, to have had her
tightly woven around me like clay
but untouchable is untouchable and yearning is for children
(she won’t have a funeral anyway, she doesn’t believe in God
either, and she won’t invite you, no she won’t invite you least of
all to a wake without a wake).
So grow up and put your shoes on child, your feet will get muddy if
you continue to walk bare foot when it rains and the thorns
will always sting even if you are pricked countless times
there is a sharp edge to beauty you said, did you know, I was once beautiful?
I know I replied, I can tell, you still are, because a woman with
wrinkles like ships on her cheeks can smile just once and
a room is devoured by her radiance
if others can’t see that, it’s all right
I think of you now, and then and in the future
alongside my day as I work beneath the fan, it is still hot
in September, yes you said, it always was in bloody infernal Texas.
People remain alive in our memories or they are forgotten
as I am, before they die
it’s all about how much they exist and what magical
recipe keeps them real and how much glue they possess
and whether they hold on, out of sheer bloody mindedness
or just for the hell of it
or perhaps they swear a lot and eat three over-easy eggs for breakfast
when the sun rises and the day is golden
and we begin over
like fools
like humans
like lovers of people who are warm and good
Natalie, like you.
TheFeatheredSleep 