Saturday, February 19, 2011

We all start off small and smooth. We grow into our scars and lines. We become the broken things that lay weeping at night. Quietly, little tears like thieves find a crease and slip from the corners…


Fifty degrees in mid-February is a gift. It's an early spring day in the middle of winter -- it's gold in the river. But by nightfall yesterday wind struck, sucking away the warmth to give us a frigid morning. Tonight the wind slashes at trees and grabs at untethered things. Bags rush across frozen heaps of yesterday's slushy snow and bounce like trashy tumbleweeds. Flags shred and snap. Branches crash down on the house like bombs. Once the light dies a thermostat rocking against its post outdoors reads 10 degrees.


Fifty degrees and other astonishments -- A man turns on his barstool to face me and I realize it is my friend M. Thank God he is here. Thank God he is smiling. He is another flash of gold in an uncertain current.


I tell Jerry about M. and we are both happy for a minute. Later I rest next to Jerry while he sleeps. A rotten weepy tear escapes and slips across my cheek. I remember being in college when I would cry like that at night. I think I left my sense of humor there in Long Island. I guess I dropped it in the outgoing tide. I remember my family visiting and we walked on hard winter sand. It's so cold that I could snap my ears off and put them in my pockets, my brother had said.


Time for some wine. Time for a book. Time to forget about the angry sad things that have their own magic gravity.


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