He asked me to write this all down. Save it in a bottle like a scoop of ocean water and sand. He likes how I write. Thinks it’s pretty. He’s bonded to our story like he has to the smell of my soap. Holding my wrist to his mouth and breathing in. My fingers unfolding into his hair. For me it’s been a string of coincidences and moments like that. Almost sickeningly sweet. Dimly lit. In soft focus. But that is what this is. What these weeks are. The weeks before we one day disagree. The weeks before the day to day can even touch us. The weeks when seeing his name pop up on my cell phone gives me butterflies.
These weeks are to be savored.
I have this idea. Or picture. It’s more of a picture. Of all these very public diaries written by boys and girls and men and women. Posted with wordy snapshots and punctuative ideas of what life is like for us. What it means to share 2007 with a planet full of people who are more alike than different. I can see this timeline in my head. Of all the people before us and all the ones yet to come. Slices of who gets to share today. And it will be a slightly different slice tomorrow. All these people telling their stories of falling in love, of being in high school, of what they had for lunch. We’re documenting life in a way that its never been documented. Turning history books to puzzles where the pieces are scattered about and each one fits with all the others.
This is what I tell myself when I write down how he smells my wrist and how we were at the same punk show in Green Bay, WI summer of 1988, and how I knit stuff and how my cat did something cute. I’m adding to this collective story. Just like you are. Just like she is. Just like he is.
I had lentil soup with spinach for lunch. Keith taught me how to say “Where is the butter?” in French as though I was extremely cranky to have to ask.
And about two months ago I met a boy. Met him because he was wearing a wrist band and I think wrist bands are totally hot. Met him because he said he was brave enough to be truthful and had gone from punk rock kid to irreverent adult with a healthy dose of grown up and dad and guy next door. Met him because I couldn’t get him out of my mind once our paths crossed. 24 hours later I was sending him an e-mail and crossing my fingers. Now he’s having his mom analyze my handwriting and wearing a scarf I made him as he visits his family in DC. His 14 year old son in tow. His cell phone charger forgotten on his kitchen table. His dad wanting to take him to church.
Everyone, this is Bob.
Bob, this is everyone.
8 comments:
hello bob. it's a pleasure to meet you. haiku-girl says she won't eat me if i die in a snow cave in the andes and she was starving, or at least she'd hold out by trying to eat my mittens or trail mix before she ate me.
she'd try really hard not to have to eat me. but i'd be dead, so it's okay.
what was i talking about? i've gone on some sort of a tangent.
hi bob...your girl is a fantastic writer, to say the least. I sigh and sink down into her prose.... lovely---like unsticky cotton-candy, only better.
HF: Airing all our private discussions for all the world to see? And by "all the world" I mean the 10 people that may ever click to this page.
jay are: "like unsticky cotton candy" may be the nicest compliment I've ever gotten regarding my writing. Thank you.
that's okay, it was not the secret conversation that we had about where we hid the treasure.
Hello Bob.
If you're the lion's share of the reason that we've been missing our favorite haikugirl, then you're probably the reason she'll start to write again. I'm at a loss as to how to feel about you. But if you're good enough for her, then you're good enough for me; for her standards are much higher than mine.
Bob. Please don't ask her to write/not write anything. Please don't skew what she wants to, and chooses to, write.
Her writing is purty. Purty like a simile which if I try to write will come out wayyyy cliche, so I don't.
But I miss it when it's not here.
why did blogger do that weird thing with my profile again?!?
I have a 14-yr-old son and a dad who wants me to go back to church and my college roommate calls me Bob and I sometimes forget my cellphone charger. Am I your Bob? If so, sorry I forgot to call lately. It's all so confusing.
He's right. You are an amazing writer.
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