Rudys

I don't think she told us her name but she had bright hopeful eyes even at the age of 43. They fluttered here and there with excitement as our eyes landed on the caramel creAm with brittle skin, over to the pasteries, the quiche, their freshly made spread. 

 The thick French accent was included in every word and every now and then she would stop, touching her temples or cheeks, apologizing for the brokenness of her English. We waved her concern away and kept pressing in for answers, enthralled with their bravery, their voyage away from home to this place. 

It was evident how excited she was to share her background, how the taxes were so high there, the government so corrupt, the tragedy that happened recently, it all brought them here. She mentioned her son in law with her hand and at the same time and motioned to her daughter, who fluttered around preparing plates, washing her hands, her husband letting the caramel sauce ooze out near the pastery on the clear plate. Her and her husband both, shoulder to shoulder were giddy with excitement to take our order, his blue eyes exposed just as my joy in the blue of his eyes. I wondered what people saw in me while I spoke,  I hoped it was just as full of light.

"This place," she said, lifting her eyes as if to show how overcome she was by it, "it's my dream." 

His name was Jim, actually.

"I just came from there actually," he told me as I explained how this weather wasn't very cold at all, because I'm from Michigan. 

His voice felt curled on the end of each sentence, like a tiny lisp or insecurity was attached on the end of each sentence like at one time he had to learn to force himself to interact, to speak.  "I'm from Fennville." 

The pool sparkled under the dark night sky, and the hot tub rumbled behind us, angry at its heat. 

I started writing this portion in my head and so I felt more friendly then I normally would, digging for a little bit of morsels to interject here and there, hoping I could make him interesting. I thought of things to ask as he straddled the roll of plastic that would soon be a skin for the surface of the pool. His legs curled around it and he road it like a bull on wheels along the edge of the pool to the correct location. The jean jacket was a little long at the wrists like he'd bought it at a thrift store with flannel lining, and the jeans, baggy around his knees and ankles. 

Normally, I wouldn't feel very comfortable or interested talking to a man my fathers age (who I had assumed was creeping around the pool collecting images of me as I exercise, until he told me his girlfriend and him both close the pool when it's necessary. The temperature had dropped tonight and so closing the pool was necessary.) In my story I named him Jerry, it seemed to fit him. 

He reminded me of my father, short in stature and squeaky in the way he walked, like on his toe not his heel. Apparently his mother has dementia, she is 92. He cares for her, and the pool, and his girlfriend is usually here, but she's a little sick tonight. 

 I asked him a couple normal terrifying questions like who he was and what he does. "I just retired actually, it's pretty scary... you gotta stay busy." I mentioned how taking care of his mother must keep him busy, and how good that was of him. "Well, sort of," he answered leaving the comment seem unended, like there was more there. I told him how my dad just retired too, and how he gardened and took care of the chickens and he seemed quite surprised about Dad's activity level. 

  Amongst all this, he mentioned in passing how he came here, later than usual, has a daughter in Fennville, how he drove down to Florida this time, and with a satisfied look on his face he told me "i had to, because i had to bring the motorcycle." 

Somehow, the way he said it with his head tilted slightly and said it over top of whatever max was mumbling was just enough information to know that this was some of the most essential information he had unpacked for me. 

Portion

I am a portion 

Of your trouble 

Of your anger 

But also your morning 

I am also where the sun rises 

And the warm body to which you belong

To which you stride with

Do not forget the portion of me

That helps you stand tall when you want to wrinkle 

California

He talked about California for a year before her. The skating, the palms, the sun.

Now those plans have changed and you are not disheartened. 

She's your California. 

Bustle

The chair never had time to warm 

Over and over again she was up and down 

Delivering coffee, making hashbrowns 

Filling the belly of the dishwasher 

Folding a towel in case he wants a shower 

Taking a shower, dressing, sweeping off the couch from last nights crumbs 

She bustles around me 

Every part of my blood anxious from the moving 

While the tv plays and while I wait for the pastor to awake 

Carefully 

From dreams 

They say that you marry a woman like your

Mother 

I'm trying to find the

Commonality in our blood 

- How to take the bustling out of a woman

Friendship

It was during my war that I found friendship 

& not the plastic kind, you know what I mean 

It was between the bomb shelters and the explosions

You were the quiet part 

The safe part 

And that is why I made I through. 

.

I found God 

He was in the branches of winter 

____

I think he knows we are better with our eyes and fingers and this is why he has no voice

He gave breathing and all this space in our lungs to sift through 

And it's a wonder why we wonder 

Where he is 

testimony

my story and my voice broke all over the room and all over your heads
whichever parts you could pick up anyway

I hope I did not speak for nothing about everything that broke me and made me stronger and all the knowledge I have about  how to get back on your feet again when you cannot

I know what it is like to not be able to put one foot in front of the other for fear of using all of the energy

I know what it is like to feel like you must remake all of what you know over again and to turn away honey over and over again because you thought the stickiness would affect the taste

listening

I remember when I was most alone
most empty of all I had been made to do
you came to byron center to find a bench with me

we were on a trail, the sun was cutting its knife through the trees and you were telling me everything like you do, how afraid you were.

how you didn't know what it would be like. how you were trying not to be afraid, how you kept thinking about him and his way out, and how parenting felt like your knowledge of Pelicans, something you had seen from a distance but had never been yourself. I watched you put your long dark piano fingers across your growing womb as you spoke about knowing him as he grew larger and  I remember you telling me how you had already named him and what you thought about the name and where it had come from. you tell me everything, and I like that.

I don't remember, did I give you advice I didn't have?
I hope I absorbed you there, all your words.
I hope I left the topic unresolved and just shook my head and said things like "yes, yes" and "oh I cannot imagine" instead of trying to fix it, or cure it, or ease it like butter eases bread

I think that would be the best way I could have befriended you that day, and I thought of it just now, as I thought of listening. how it has nothing to do with the mouth, and more to do with the eyes and the shoulders.

T.K. 1986-2016

I drank in the photographs of his life, feeling like an imposter

thumbing through a book he made when he was 8, the construction paper feels rusty and expired like his life  

he had wanted to be a professional football player

someday

They had chosen a blue button up collared shirt that was tightened all the way to the top, every button was carefully attached, even snug around his wrists. that way no one would know. I wondering if they had told son the way they found him, hanging there.

 his wrists were crisscrossed like branches at his waste, casket hung with its mouth open, the white roses crowding the space. 

everyone is fumbling with their eyes, their words, their handshakes.

I watch G, he shakes his head over and over again, talking to himself, talking to T, reliving a few memories with his hollow body lying there. 

G looks empty himself, and every part of this trauma reminds him of a funeral he attended three years ago, except then it was his wife he stood over.

 T's sisters are grieving in two.

 One: in a dimlit room, sunglasses tight at her temples, the walls around her have no doors and she sits in silence next to a man whose skin is tight and thirsty. 

 Two: her cheeks are full and swollen, pink with kissing and embracing the flood of people, smiling, weeping, shaking hands, though her handshake has the life of a rag. 

   I don't know who we are telling, but,

  T learned how to kill himself from his mother. 

  I see my husband above the crowd, his eyes following T's son. He discerns the state of the boy, and hovers from room to room with him, wondering if he should, if he would have a chance to say something, what would he say? what could he say? 

T's ex-wife, full with child, a black dress closely pressed around her womb, her face is dry, but she is here to grieve as well in the quiet of this room, with one cell phone bleating into the silence.

  I exit the flooded space and find a quiet row that is soon cluttered with people muttering as they stare at his pictures, " oh what a cute kid he was, " " oh what nice nice pictures these are," 

   a girl behind me is weeping through the entire funeral, and the one in front rubs her own shoulders for comfort, then her neck, her body doubled over, filling the sleeves of her sweater with her tears. 

  Max fills the chapel with words he's  mulled over, to give just enough lifting, just enough encouragement with a space to grieve. Ive never seen him a suit, but there he is, desperate to make this a respected space, tight and straight and ironed carefully, the tie as tight as a rope.

there are ten sides to this story and you only know one of them

I don't think I have found out yet how to take the rattle out of the rattle snake of family
the words cast about like tiny fires lighting the people we adore into flame
sizzling down the good we know of each other so that we can take one good bite of spite

-conflict

Prayer

I have found it hard to pray 

Unless it is written like I write and why should it be any different really 

_______

I don't care if he doesn't have the words or the strength anymore I will have the words and the strength for him and so father I ask that you close this gap let me be a sacrifice standing in the center of this darkness let your light from the throne room peek in as I put one foot in his room and one in yours and ask that they join

Isn't this the purpose of prayer and so God i wrestle and ask again and beg and wonder why you never healed him yet even though I've been begging for years 

Heck it doesn't matter I'm going to pray anyway and believe that you've heard it all 

Despite the lack of movement 

And then you remind me where he was last year you ask me to ponder to wonder to see the way his hands couldn't stop shaking being of the intake of alcohol and then I'm reminded that soon there after he was sent in a lunatic to a place he called prison while we waited for him to be made well 

And then I remember that he's asking begging pleading for help even though a year ago he had disappeared thinking he was well 

And so these questions he's asking this is grace 

He's still here able to have a conversation 

Sober from the boos 

Sober from the death of a close friend and so I ask God 

Continue to heal the brother I so dearly love 

Family

Chin on shoulder 

They both sit lanky

Shoulder to shoulder 

Next to each other 

Two houses with joined rooves 

We set this up, Elise and I, her washing things in my sink filling it with soapy water and scrubbing down the walls of the stainless steel taking about being a widow about charity taatjes about dinner and how to caramelize walnuts on top of French toast as she dips into it scraping it onto the bread hats with her finger 

We become family. 

All of us. 

The parents file in like Pelicans 

Through the doors and over the icy steps and with hands full of sweet fruit

They

Life givers 

Spooning out their youth to make us the trees we are now and we collect as one around a prayer a table over bread and eggs and hazelnut coffee and thank God 

The Jesus I hear some of you might be unsure of 

Skeptical of 

Before we begin 

I allow questions 

Afterwards, after the adults have gone 

We sit on the floor

The dog between our knees and our laps and in fingers and how did this happen that so quickly and like wearing a sweater 

So easily 

Did

We

Become family