you wouldn’t know it by driving this little winding road but, we left secrets in the forest. it’s in the eagle feather that we found and the skipped stones and the campfire we threw bundled sage into. we came as one thing and left as something else, leaving pieces of ourselves scattered along the beach like snail shells and beach glass, old bones like driftwood made smooth by the ever changing water.
somewhere in the coffee black sheets white mornings we shared that stank like firewood and weed, punctuated by incessant laughter, we peeled off our skin and our masks and all the confines and trappings of a complicated world and ran wild amongst the thicket.
we laughed like coyotes, bold and unwavering into the darkness, like we would never die or know pain again. the prideful manner of our dwindling youth echoed back to us as giggles amongst the trees.
we left secrets in that forest, and came back with cedar in our hair, a broken tooth and candy wrappers in our pockets.
can you feel us there in that dark permanence of thorn and branches?
we were here, and we cried bitter tears under running water and drank watermelon iced tea to cover up the taste of blood inside our mouths but you can still see it between our teeth.
the snow comes and covers up the trails we ran, but the trees remember us.
i’m troubled on my lunch break today and walk to the thrift store. as always, i’m paging through the books, looking for interesting paper ephemera to scan, or cut up for my endless collaging and scrapbooking. amongst the discarded and dog-eared volumes, i find a little book called “the kiss: lovers quotations and romantic paintings” and inside i find the above little love note dated july 2005.
and isn’t it just.. like.. fucking beautiful?
god, it just made me weak in the knees, this entirely romantic little gesture, god i’d just melt if someone gave me something like this… and then, too, i became a little sad that this little volume, given with love twenty years ago ended up discarded and on sale for a few cents at a dirty little thrift shop.
anyways. i brought the book home in order to scan this note for this blog, for all the other rage filled romantics and deranged dreamers who find their home here alongside my words.
i wonder if R still thinks Petra’s kisses are living things.
we are both young in this photo, with willful faces staring into the camera inside the old church. had we been praying, lost in reverie before the shutter closed and captured us as we were on that chilly day in october?
we kissed in the pews, chaste of course and held hands amongst dusty prayer books while the gleaming monstrance and sad-eyed jesus watched.
the old wood is damp and so is the carpet and the air is resplendent in petrichor and the wretched sweetness of decay coming through the floorboards. ive sang in this place gently offering the lonely words of ‘wayfaring stranger’ to the old chapel.
i took a girl here once because i had a crush on her and i thought she was beautiful in the same broken way that i admire in people – the same way i admire it in myself, too.
it’s in him, too, you know? the pain he carries inside that viking blood of his is the same pain that i carry inside me. i feel his pain as he feels mine.
we are young in this photo, and we are beautiful, too. i hope one day that someone somewhere finds this photo of us together, maybe some grainy crusty .jpg on an internet archive of tumblr posts or maybe tucked between the pages of a book about alchemy or martyrs or birds. i hope they wonder about us. i hope someone makes up a story about us and i hope they can feel the old chapel and our pain and our beauty and the way that something bigger than us was in that room with us.
It was thirty days til Easter when the elm tree hit the church Thank God it fell on Friday cause at least no one was hurt But there was fear it might delay the second coming of the lord Cause the stained glass crucifixion was in stains upon the floor
They spent a day of cleaning and a day to board the hole Where the stained glass once had cast a godly light upon the fold But come the Sunday service all the faces now were gray And they commenced to take donations as the faithful knelt to pray
But on Monday they discovered that the man who’d built the glass Was the only man in town who could and sadly he had passed But his father who was ninety said the tools were in the shed And he’d kindly try and resurrect the window from the dead
The congregation argued, but the wise ones all rejoiced In the one hand was solution, in the other was no choice And they gave the man their blessings and they gave his hand a shake And they gave him all the coins they had collected on their plate
It was seven days til Easter and they’d seen a hide nor hair So they came and knocked at suppertime in hopes the man was there But a banging from the basement was ‘bout all that they could hear And curses that might make the devil blush and wash his ears
Come first thing easter morning and to everyone’s good grace The man was up on ladders with the window nailed in place It was covered in black velvet like a hood or like a veil He pulled the sheet and there it hung apocryphal and frail
The seams had melted jagged, they were crooked like a spine The glass was rough like hands of man against the hands of time And there was bloodstains in the red and there were teardrops in the blue He said: It may not be the best but it’s the best that I can do
The chapel fell to silence, it was more than just surprise As the monstrosity of color slid its tongue across their eyes And they shivered from exposure like babies born again Cause in every pane of glass was all the joy and pain of man . . .
There was every fearful smile, there was every joyful tear There was each and every choice that leads from every there to here There was every cosy stranger and every awkward friend And there was every perfect night that’s left initials in the sand There was every day that filled so full the weeks would float away And there was all those days spent wondering what to do with all those days There was every lie that ever saved the truth from being shamed And every secret you could ever trust a friend to hide away There was the fortune of discovering a new face you might adore And the thrill of coming home to find her clothes upon the floor And the prideful immortality of children in the home That the storm can’t grind the mountain down, it can only shift the stones And there was everything your mouth says that your lips don’t understand And every shape inside your head you can’t carve with your hands And every slice of glass revealed another slice of life Emblazened imperfections in a perfect stream of light It all flooded through the window like rapids made of fire And then God rode through on sunshine and sat down cause he was tired He was tired.
As the thunder and the hardwood settled back into its place God removed his veil and there were scars across his face And some folks prayed in reverence and some folks prayed in fear As all the shades and chaos in the glass became a mirror
hospital vespers 