2 years on

back from a week away; message on the answering machine. caller doesn't identify himself but doesn't need to. it's the voice i heard over my shoulder in mrs. mitchell's pastels class, so young he was back then, we all were but him even more, before his time with the dog and ours with him. gabe in fucking south dakota, WTF.

hey um sorry to be calling in the middle of the night, but i saw her, finn. she was running on the cart path by the creek. it might have been a sunday morning but she was alone. man was she flying, that long wheeling stride where her feet are just a blur and her hair flags out behind her. god, that blonde flag of hair... it was so good to see her again, you know? i couldn't tear my eyes away. but then she turned to go over the bridge and i saw she was crying, and she probably had been for a while because her eyes were all red and her cheeks were all wet, and then i woke up. i tried to call but it says the number's been disconnected. so please check on her finn. remember we talked about our saving grace? i don't know what i'd do. please just check on her.

someone's moved a bit beyond the perimeter. i thought about *69g and calling him back -- she's gone G -- but then laf pulled up and the dog started barking and time commenced to move regular again.

hertford college, 1990

you got a postcard – D said – from england?? -but it doesn't say from who.

wordlessly i take it from him: oxford's Bridge of Sighs at night under the soft glow of gas lamps. of course. this weekend is tad's birthday, when the bottom would drop out of kim for a bit and gabe would shore her back up.

i turn the card over in my hands, noting the softened edges and striated ring marks from the bottoms of tumblers. mine's in a picture frame; he's less precious. i guess he's also in south dakota now.

“i miss her” was all he'd written.

i do too.

'a night, a death, the end of a run'

running single-track last night, losing light and the outlines of trees and shapes of reaching undergrowth moving faster on either side, pushing to the event horizon where everything shuts down, ducking through a corner blindly and. suddenly on the ground. stunned. a hand skinned, an elbow grazed, hip thudding. looked up; a huge shape between me and the sky, curving horns black against blue. the escaped brahman bull. smell of anise, a stick a stone, it's the end of the road.

what are you running from child?
shake my head. nothing. sticky warmth on my knee, a scratch a lump, it is nothing at all. it is the tall wooly-headed orderly, five years of handling little babies at AI, slides the point; i feel nothing. is that what makes you so gentle?
head cocks.
gentle?
clear turgid bag sways dripping into marrow, and the riverbank talks of the waters of march, blades burr against skin like the backs of warm bees
there is nothing behind you
there is no reason for fear.
one wheel creaks, panicked shriek of captain kirk. you said he ran away. i lied. lies.
lies?
mother's hand on brow, see you later alligator, now count back from 100, 99, 98 it's the end of all strain, will i will i will i
feel this again? the foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
yes.
'this' is your creation.
crescent moons dip and fade into black. outlines and shapes reconstitute, ebb then fall of cicadas, after a while, 3 2 1

my lips may promise but my heart is a whore

F's in early too, finds me beavering away.
- sooooo, i'm not engaged anymore - he announces. i read relief on his dark face, a bit of sadness but mostly relief.
- really. what happened?
- she cheated on me, the cheap slut.
- that's perfect.
- "perfect."
- yeah, because now you're out, but you're not the one bringing shame on her family, or yours.
he smiled wryly.
- you know, you're the only one who got that. everyone else says oh i'm so sorry.

sometimes we hit it out of the ballpark.
but most of the time it's just awkward and lonely in this half-light where the only entity is the self and it aint all that transcendent.

you do it as long as you can

- two weeks in a row!? - Queen T said to me when i showed up at tuesday nite track. yeah sometimes ppl r ok. LAF was there, and AJ, mcgrunty and teej. i imagine the steeplechaser is doing super-secret stealth training to prep for Trials... a bummer as he is lovely to watch.

coach fischer lays out the two workout options then extends his thanks to those who showed for kim's funeral 2 weeks ago. in his 20 years of coaching, kim's been fisch's only female NCAA champion, and they became good friends after she graduated from UD and settled in wilmington. she died sept 11th, having been in a coma since july '06, when she fell down her stairwell and incurred a C2 spinal injury. she was 43 then.

the viewing and funeral were packed with runners, because outside her sport kim was rather solitary, with a tough, bristly shell that gave way under hours on the trails but not at the water cooler. before the service fisch was drawn and nervous: he was one of 3 to speak about kim's life. it's okay - i told him - we're most of us runners. talk to us as though we're your team. his wife smiled sadly and led him away. i heard a voice at my shoulder pipe - hey finn! - and turned to face theresa, whom i hadn't seen since the XC race last fall. she ran with kim at dickinson high.
- hi theresa. how're you doing?
- did you hear i set an age-group record?!! - coming from theresa, this should not have been a surprise, but i was so distraught after talking to fisch that i shook my head and just walked away.

so thank you all for coming out - fisch is saying as we shuffle nervously before our 1200s - because it's really hard to lose someone that young but seeing familiar faces out there made it easier. i know she's in a better place but she still leaves a big hole behind. ummm, also one of our volleyball coaches was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and it looks like the aggressive kind, so please keep her in your thoughts. enjoy your run. enjoy the night, and enjoy being healthy enough to do this. you won't have this forever, so do it as long as you can.

love: leaving

@ Kim's bed

Behind the veil of her Condition she hears Tad. He's telling her about a movie he, Alex and Geoff saw, something about Spartans and Persians and CGI creatures, and how Geoff hated it. Kim's chest opens a little; she feels as though she's back in the old world. Of course he hated it -- Geoff's cinematic tastes ran more along the lines of Bergman, Kieslowski and Lynch; anything that smacked of bourgeois, post-production excess was sure to invoke his ire. On the first awkward date, the one where you eagerly define yourselves in likes and dislikes, this passionate young man with the choirboy eyes insisted Eraserhead was the best movie ever made, that Kim really didn't know what she was missing. So on the fourth date they rented Eraserhead, and it was truly awful. But since it was a test of her suitability, and she really did like this aspiring artist with the brooding eyes, god forgive her, she effused about the movie's objective correlative and bleak existentialism, dredging up remnants of a college Lit Crit class and acing Geoff's test. And that set the precedent, of course; she could never tell Geoff what she really thought of David Lynch without rewriting her husband's entire definition of her.

Lost in the past, she'd realised she'd neglected Tad and mentally castigated herself. She wished she didn't fade and out like this because every word that dropped from his lips was a feast to her, for it opened up a host of memories she could feed off until the next time he appeared at her bedside. Did he know how much his visits meant to her? Why else would he keep coming?

He was describing a hike they did in Yosemite, how long ago was that, oh he couldn't have been more than what, eight? God he was incredible taking on that mountain – Half-Dome it must have been. She thought she was alone, battling demons every step up that mountain, seeing her past in black and white; but when she turned at the last cairn wanting to throw herself off Half-Dome's rocky profile, she instead found her eldest son staring up at her. God he was incredible. He was her one good thing... and Alex too. If nothing else, she could at least say I made these kids. Geoff and I could put something together at least.

She never pictured this. She never pictured herself lying in a hospice bed, groomed and cared for by a phalanx of aides, at the mercy of others, relying on their sense of duty and pity. She never pictured a son who visited all the time, and another who existed purely though his brother's narratives. She never pictured being forty; she never pictured motherhood. That was Geoff's fault. He had to let the propane run down... typical of her husband, who was so good at engaging at the moment of an idea's conception – honey, we need a gas grill, it'll make dinners so easy – but then melting away when the glamorous idea became dull reality. So of course the propane tank ran empty while she was grilling ribs, so she loaded the tank in the tiny trunk of her Miata, cursing Geoff when paint chips flaked off the tank to drift around her trunk.

She drove to the Texaco, where the tattooed teenager behind the counter summoned his manager to the filler tank. “Elle” read the name tag beneath a deeply lined face that seemed much older than the arms that took the tank from Kim. Elle hefted the tank experimentally.

-- Still a little bit in here. - but not enough to grill ribs, thought Kim.
-- Oh really? How do you know?
-- By weight.
Unable to argue, Kim just nodded, then stepped around the filler tank so she had a clear view of her car and its wide-open trunk while Elle began the refill.
-- Gotta be careful when you fill these things because the propane can escape if you top off, and you don't want want that smell all over you, do you.
-- No – Kim agreed – you probably don't - then craned her head for a view of the Miata and its popped trunk.
-- You got a baby in the car?
-- Excuse me?
-- You got a BABY in the car.
Kim laughed; what a silly notion. Me? With a baby? Elle stared at her, awaiting an answer.
-- Um, no. A baby? No.
Elle stood motionless while propane whirred into the tank, and Kim felt as though she must justify herself.
-- No baby. Just, er, my car's wide open. And it's kind of my baby, you know?

Elle looked as though she didn't know, and Kim felt a chasm open in front of her. The undeniable fact was that she wasn't 17 anymore, and having a baby in the back seat was perfectly natural in Elle's eyes. My car's my baby? What was I thinking?

Kim drove home in a daze and found a message from Edward, who'd dropped off her radar a year ago. Hey so I had this dream last night, that you have twins now, twins with your sun-catching blonde hair, and their names are Thaddeus and Karl. So, um, confirm or deny, since my dreams have a way of creeping into reality. Be well. Kim was overcome, weakened by coincidence and fear of a growing distance in her marriage; and that night she made a point of staying awake until Geoff finally came home and she's certain that's when Tad came onto the scene.

He's gone now; Kim doesn't remember when he left. What did he say about Half-Dome, she thinks. Goddammit I wish I could stay present. She wars against herself for ten minutes then drifts away.

love: staying

last july 4th, a local runner fell in the stairwell of her townhouse, suffered a C2 spinal injury and has been in a coma since she was found, hours later, by a friend.

that much is true.

@ kim’s bed

Heya, mom. Yeah, so I’m sorry I didn’t come last week. Alex was sick, he had some kind of stomach flu where shit, sorry I mean stuff, was coming out both ends and Dad wasn’t around and I didn’t want to leave him alone. He’s better now, though. Dad took us to see 300 last night, and it was freakin’ awesome – it’s supposed to be about an ancient battle between the Spartans & Persians, but really it’s like an Ultimate Fighting match with some CGI creatures thrown in. You would have dug it. Dad hated it, of course, and when we got back in the car he yelled at me for tracking mud on the passenger side and Alex didn’t say a thing even though it’s his fault and even Dad could have figured that out if he weren’t so wrapped up in his own… stuff. Anyway, it was cool for him to take us out. And he said we might go to Aspen for Christmas this year. And, um, well it’s spring now, getting warmer, and your daffodils look really nice: the tall yellow ones and the shorter white ones. I know it sounds weird, but they remind me of a picture I have of you – you probably don’t remember cos it was a long time ago, like 10 years when we were all together, camping in Yosemite. We did this long day hike that seemed to go straight up the freakin’ mountain, and you hiked so fast that sometimes I had to run to catch up with you. My pack bounced up on and down on my back and that Nalgene bottle beat the crap out of my kidneys it felt like and I don’t remember anything about the trail, or what we passed, because all I could see was your legs in front of me and the way your calf muscles moved when your foot landed and took off. That was back when I thought you were an X-Man, remember? Like Storm. We finally got to the top, which was all wind-swept rock and a couple scruffy, short trees and you stopped at the last cairn – which was a good thing, cos I was about to freakin’ pass OUT – and when you turned around and saw me, you looked startled, as if you didn’t even know I was there. You looked down at me and there was something in your eyes I had never seen before. It was hard and wild and… oh, something. Do you remember that, Mom? Do you? You were breathing heavy (for an X-man) and you looked at me with those weird, startled eyes. “Wings,” you whispered, or least I think that’s what you said because it was hard to hear you. “Wings.”

We stood there listening to the wind, waiting for Dad and Alex, but the next people up the trail were a couple of Europeans, German maybe? – and you asked if they would take a picture of you and your son, and that’s the picture I’ve got in my desk drawer, under a bunch of back-up CDs nobody will ever need. In it you’re tall and straight, and I’m the knock-kneed, platinum-haired kid with one arm wrapped around your legs. The wind’s blowing your hair back and I can see that your eyes are back to normal, and your smile is your typical picture smile but it’s funny – if I squint my eyes and hold the picture really close, there’s a faint cluster of clouds that almost billows out from your shoulders.

Okay Ma, I gotta go. Alex has soccer practice and Dad says I can drive even more now that the weather’s getting better, so that’s really cool. Maybe I’ll drop Alex off at Ursuline instead, since he plays like a girl anyway. Heh, just jokin’.

Be back next week. I love you, Mom.