T sends me this poem after I visit my grandparents’ gravesites with mom: Voices Ideal and beloved voices of those who are dead, or of those who are lost to us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams; sometimes in thought the mind hears them. And with their sound for a moment return other sounds from the first poetry of our life — like distant music that dies off…
One of the great things about T is her love for New Orleans. She had an opportunity to move elsewhere and couldn’t imagine not living here. I woke melancholy without her – her first night out of the compound as her friends refer to the LaLa – it was a stunningly gorgeous day and there was a marathon passing in front of the house. Roy hung his usual “TURN FOR THE WORSE” sign up right at…
Mom tells me as we drive across the Causeway, matter of factly – “They’re shooting the doves again.” She calls the police on them, but she says the police no longer respond. “I can’t bear to hear it,” she says. Dove – what a beautiful name and image the word conjures – peace.
Mom threw a drama fit yesterday saying her mother’s birthday is today and she needed to go see her grave. Unable to say no, I drove her to Franklinton this morning, where we laid a black pebble on my grandmother’s tombstone. The grave is in front of my uncle’s house and his grave is next to hers. Someone put a porcelain photograph of my grandmother – Mae – on the tombstone and in it she…
J likes to call me Zia for zealous – she suggests I’m, well, how do you say in English, a little over the top.T asked me on Mardi Gras day, “Are you Lesbian?” – deliciously dropping the article with her sexy Croatian accent – I said to myself, “No, but I am now!”This morning, picking up T’s bike at Bayou Bicycles, I saw R, who called gently from the back of an SUV – “Rachel?”…
Driving T home from the compound – the official end to our third date – we passed a truck with a sign that said, “Miracle Man – I can fix anything but a broken heart.”
Here in the US we have our typical lone gunmen shooting down students as witnessed at NIU last week, whereas yesterday, in Serbia, they are burning American flags and rooms in the US embassies in protest over who owns what land. Same old psychosis, different day.
I sit here on my throne trying to contemplate how I will endure two hours away from you and realize I must endure two months plus and therein lies my next obstacle to overcome. How can I possibly be without you?