Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Tender Is
I ran late again tonight. So, as always when it is dark, I took Howard east. It was quiet, and I watched the sky to the left of me, three new stars appearing.
My downstairs tenant awoke to her car being burglarized this morning. I heard the screams. I spoke to her after it was all over, the quiver still in her voice: "Eighteen, Latino or dark white; curly, dark hair." He hid behind the steering wheel. And I could imagine that moment when they saw each other. How she must have backed away after yelling. The blood pulsing in her shoulders and wrists.
I had never seen these three -- no, four -- new lights in the sky. They were so perfectly distanced from each other as I approached the lake that they could only have been streetlights.
And I remember wanting to talk to her longer, as if there was anything I could do, an hour after the fact. So much bluster, my imploring to bang on our door if it were to happen again echoed. And in this small way I could relate to her helplessness.
At some point, though, because life is never as extraordinary as we hope it to be, the streetlights or stars moved, the middle helicopter shifting the most, moving closer, angling. I ran back, west, to see if it was all just my movement, if I could see them again as they had been lined up before. But it was beyond me. They had forever broken ranks.
This was the helplessness of the mother, upon seeing her child crying because of how all children cry when they learn life can hurt. The mother who can only stare, and brush her hand against a chin, and wring palms. And cry alone.
I reached the land at the end of the road, and peered further, unable to tell if it was the top of the hill or the water's dark, distant horizon, now fully frustrated with the emptiness of possibility and the infinity of persistence.
I woke up late last night, shocked, panting, thinking they had all discovered me, saw me for all I lacked.
And the chorus still sings to me: Come on, come on, come on, get through it.
My downstairs tenant awoke to her car being burglarized this morning. I heard the screams. I spoke to her after it was all over, the quiver still in her voice: "Eighteen, Latino or dark white; curly, dark hair." He hid behind the steering wheel. And I could imagine that moment when they saw each other. How she must have backed away after yelling. The blood pulsing in her shoulders and wrists.
I had never seen these three -- no, four -- new lights in the sky. They were so perfectly distanced from each other as I approached the lake that they could only have been streetlights.
And I remember wanting to talk to her longer, as if there was anything I could do, an hour after the fact. So much bluster, my imploring to bang on our door if it were to happen again echoed. And in this small way I could relate to her helplessness.
At some point, though, because life is never as extraordinary as we hope it to be, the streetlights or stars moved, the middle helicopter shifting the most, moving closer, angling. I ran back, west, to see if it was all just my movement, if I could see them again as they had been lined up before. But it was beyond me. They had forever broken ranks.
This was the helplessness of the mother, upon seeing her child crying because of how all children cry when they learn life can hurt. The mother who can only stare, and brush her hand against a chin, and wring palms. And cry alone.
I reached the land at the end of the road, and peered further, unable to tell if it was the top of the hill or the water's dark, distant horizon, now fully frustrated with the emptiness of possibility and the infinity of persistence.
I woke up late last night, shocked, panting, thinking they had all discovered me, saw me for all I lacked.
And the chorus still sings to me: Come on, come on, come on, get through it.
