bois d'arc

she's leaning on the railing, cigarette in hand.

in a thick, eastern-european accent she calls out to me, "darling, i do hope you can make it to suki's MFA thesis tonight. she is having a show..." her voice trails off as i round the corner and head upstairs. i have watched her go from old to older. her eyes are still young, but her body is tired from too much living.

i won't be making it to suki's MFA thesis opening.

there is a dusty road that runs near the sculpture lab. i love that road, and right now it smells of honeysuckle. to one side of the road, sad apartments with turquoise paneling and tangled vertical blinds in all of the windows. on the other, rows of trucks because someone thought it would be good joke to stick the sculpture students in with the agriculture majors.

jerry is still wearing his suits with velcro tennis shoes.

i pass your old house everyday, and it emanates sadness - not just in it's form, with the sagging porch and worn whitewash walls, but the sadness i place on it. everything that went wrong between the two of us.

sometimes i feel sorry for the house, and i confuse it with feeling sorry for you.

sometimes i see you as one and the same.

part of me wonders what would happen if i knocked on your window some morning. would you come to the window, sleepy-eyed and messy-haired? take my hand, and i’d crawl back into bed with you? we’d listen to ‘street spirit’ over and over while you trace the lines in the palms of my hands.

but no. the house holds nothing more than mini blinds hidden behind foil covered windows. there are two broken bottles on the kitchen window sill. and you are off somewhere wearing a uniform for a country you don't love that much. i saw you once in it, and you've never looked worse.

passing the old house makes me think of the big mulberry tree we used to park under, and the nights we spent underneath it. i ate lunch underneath it yesterday.

we sweep out the floors of the studios, and paint the walls, but it's a futile effort. by spring the whole place will be leveled. they will take away our walls and sinks and the paint splattered concrete - all things that tell the stories of years and years.

they will put in a baseball field, but the ghosts of memories will haunt it.

i will leave in a few days time, and i will not turn around to look back.

this town holds nothing good for me.

10:40 p.m. - 2003-04-28

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