ebbing.

It’s tough to think back on the days when Bryan and I were best friends, just because everything looks a million times better in light of the fallout. Somehow, memory has a way of discarding the imperfections, offering up instead an inordinately pristine slideshow of sensory overload, five-second clips with too-bright lights and amplified laughter.

We’re at Bryan’s uncle’s lake house in '05, sitting on the gray wooden dock, fishing lines drifting as aimlessly as typical mid-afternoon conversation between fourteen-year-olds. Bryan turns to me and asks me if I know how to play Wonderwall on guitar yet, which is his way of keeping me accountable because I'd promised to teach him once I learned.

The air hangs thick and almost wetter than the seaweed swaying in the ripples beneath our toes, and the sky is the kind of blank paper gray that means there's literally a storm on the horizon. I say something clever. Bryan half-smiles, the way that always meant he was amused and trying not to show it.

Then we're back to the present, the approaching thunder echoing into the cavernous emptiness of a fading reminiscence.

spectator.

whatsername's not guilty,
thought she was a lock.
angry people congregate again.

who just won? i think he
was a guest on 30 Rock?
love that show, I might have seen him then.

whoa, they found and shot him
and they've got it on TV.
gory stuff! how crazy! is that live?

wow, they've hit the bottom.
screw these rising fees.
how do they expect me to survive?

they've released a new one?
i just got the old!
why's this always happening to me?

can't wait for this season!
that guy could be gold,
guess i'll tune in every week to see.

tradition.

The world is a great and a beautiful thing,
held together in one sense
by a thousand invisible forces --
magic that finds expression
in the symbols of language
passed down from generations
to indicate and illuminate the intangible,
made comprehensible through the
streamlined care of human intellect
tasking itself to know.

itinerary.

Between the nightmares on the nightly news
and the raging war within my oft-divided heart,
my world is fraught with hard-fought hills
with sharp-ridged boulders,
and ocean depths where treading begs to break.

authenticity.

to know that other people see
not something I pretend
to be, not just what
I expect that
they expect
to get
from me,
but me
with all my
momentary
mental apathy,
my beating heart in
fleeting stops and starts
propelling nervous lips apart
to flash a smile of honest pleasantry.

honesty.

I hesitate briefly with fingers on keys,
Before I decide to proceed as I please
(Despite old misgivings and newer mistakes
That strongly encourage applying the brakes).

The truth is the truth isn't totally there,
But making the most of it stands to be fair
Since most of the most of it surely sounds true.
(And doesn't that seem more authentic to you?)

It doesn't much matter if facts fall in line,
As long as I note that this version is mine.
Those people who read what I'm dying to say
Are sure to be sure of the facts, anyway.

No, I won't deceive, I will merely suggest
That there may be facts that they've failed to divest?
Oh, don't think me unctuous, unkind, uncouth --
It isn't a lie to cast doubt about truth.

farewells.

I looked behind me one last time.

It's not like the cello, the thought came in a moment, not like the way your fingers learn to mold themselves to invisible curves and crevices that your mind maps into notes you're searching for, joined together, released like a linen banner by the steady back-and-forth of your trembling bow. How the melody in your head flows in synapses that lift and let fall the tendons in your arm and wrist and hand. Free to flutter and fade with the fog of your November breath, lingering in an empty chamber full of promises for the future. No, it's not like that at all.

It's like digging a pit and watching as time turns its walls to stone.

I found him, finally. He stood still, while the steam and scream of the billowing locomotive stack swallowed first the world behind him, his silhouette stark against the twisting eddies of cloud whites and the churning grays of formless shuffling shapes. I imagined I could see his eyes - blue and narrowed, mirroring mine in their uneasy mix of resignation and intensity - but by then they were dark specks, shrinking by the moment, until he vanished completely, joining the current of unintelligible movements replacing a world I was leaving behind.

tide.

It patters soft-pawed,
a pointed ambling
across my mind,
dodging wheels,
leaping curbs:

this stray notion
(a reminder)
that every morning
the sun rises

illuminating
in seven billion
beating hearts
oceans of joy
and swirling sorrow

and who knows which
will wash ashore today

in scissored mementos
of scissored moments?