5 titles

I’m sorry

I was God

I love you good

And for once it felt like a real fall.

The flourish of spiders in my house during summer.

The first time I drove through the Pass to Pullman, Washington,

the wheat had been harvested and left

just dirt and dirt.

Good

Glass

Glass

L is my favorite letter

as Glass is my favorite word

there is a strange

way that enclosed

water smells some-

thing sickening

We stopped at a KFC, Burger King combo 

at mile 75. A woman cradling 

a 12 pack said to me,

Babysitting.

Growing up in the Mojave taught me

that precipitation always has a fast sound.

To see this silent fall for the first time is like 

if there isn’t someone who can forgive me 

I am

Sorry, I was

God

I love you 

Goodnight

B FLAT (A PARTING)

Some days, I have a red cape

and an ear for daisies.

I have glitter polish and one long nail. 

He dances and I laugh.

Then--

Do you hear the low call?

A fog horn bleats

the bodies in the street after curfew. 

The 2AM cold spring call, a B flat tonight.

But the rain evens her out, and he

can’t resist. 

Monthly blood rags drip

from the shower rod now

that I live alone. 

An old mattress hipshot

against the wall with tan

human-colored ovals and a loose

belly where the man lay. 

All the stuffing beaten out. 

Isn’t it everywhere you can see the foot catching an edge?

The shove came way before that. 

And the scramble, one final plea

juice-sweet on concrete cooked sick in the warming sun. 

Where to go from here but head-first down the stairs?

The Acorns

What I had missed most about California were these large, quiet spaces. Sprawling bars with hulking booths, old-timey dance halls during the midafternoon lull, empty lots silhouetted against the San Gabriel mountains. I had missed cruising on a freeway with nothing in sight but sky and towering chain restaurant signs that wobbled on tall, thin stems like overgrown wild flowers. The openness and the quietude mirrored something deep and empty in me, something that made me feel comfortable with being alone.

I rented a car at LAX and drove straight to Banning, California. My girlfriend sat shotgun with a pair of our friends in the back. We were on our way to a wedding on the haggard fringes of the Los Angeles sprawl. An old college friend was getting married, and they were paying for the wedding themselves. He was the first one of the friend group to tie the knot, so we all buzzed with the giddy uncertainty of being adult enough to have friends getting married but young enough to not be the one getting married. We stopped at a gas station and stood around in the comfortable heat drinking light beers and playing pop music on the car radio. I walked across the asphalt into the low chaparral on the edge of the road. Cars whooshed by one at a time. In between, it was quiet.

We all piled back into the rental, got back on the freeway, and my phone rang over the Bluetooth. I answered, and the voice of my mother crackled over the speakers.

“Hey, Night –” she said, her voice falling an octave so I could tell something was wrong. I knew she didn’t realize she was on speakerphone when she used my childhood nickname.

“I was just calling to let you know your grandfather passed last night. I’m sorry. I know you’re headed to a wedding, so I wasn’t sure if I should call but—” She stopped.

I stewed in a silence that permeated the car and stretched across Banning all the way to my mom in Northern California. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to laugh very badly. Just to fill the space. To ease the discomfort of my friends. I tried to think of what people said in these situations. What would sound adult? But the quiet sat in me like a swallowed balloon. Still, taking up space, but lacking all weight.

“It’s okay,” I finally told my mom and the whole car.

“The funeral’s next Wednesday if you want to fly up,” she said. “Your grandma will probably want you to be a pallbearer. I really don’t know. I mean I hardly knew him. It’s a lot right now. We’re still figuring it all out. He didn’t leave many instructions….” I told my mom I would call her back later and hung up the phone. The mention of a funeral made an image of him swim around my head. It wasn’t an image of how I knew him but a pale shadow of what I thought he might have looked like when he was found. What would he look like inside his coffin? Just a reflection of the man I used to know.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said to my friends.

There was a collective scoff and then all at once, “No, I’m sorry.” They were sorry. We were sorry. Everyone was sorry. Sorry, and not a whole lot to say, to feel. Just the quiet of California. I turned up the radio, relieving us of the awkwardness. My girlfriend squeezed my hand.

“Do you want to pull over?”

I shook my head without taking my eyes off the freeway. Then, not wanting her to think I was hiding tears in my eyes, I turned to her and smiled.

“No, I’m okay,” I said.

The occasional tree whizzed by. In the distance, Mount Baldy darkened as the sun set behind it. On a billboard, a cartoon balloon drawn with a human face collided with a power line. “Don’t let ‘em go!” Beyond that there was nothing but low, brown forms. It was quiet out there, yes, I could tell even from inside the car. But it felt strange now, coming back after all the months away. After getting a girlfriend in a new city and trying to be someone who communicates. After the phone call. It was no longer a good quiet.

I pulled off at our exit. The town was a long, narrow strip laid out next to the road so that no matter where you were in Banning you weren’t far from the freeway. There were several economy hotels, but by the looks of it, most visitors to Banning were sleeping in truck cabs. The roads were curbless. The pavement simply faded into dirt, and the trucks were parked in this dusty no man’s land.

We passed a large, deep purple semi with purple dice hanging from the rearview mirror. The heat danced angrily off the purple paint, sizzling. The conversation had turned back to the wedding festivities. There was a welcome reception and then a rehearsal dinner tonight. A brunch was being held by an aunt in the morning. Then the ceremony and the reception were tomorrow evening. The whole rigmarole, carefully planned, thoughtfully developed. We had things to do. The bride, the groom, each wedding guest knew their roles, emailed beforehand in an itinerary. Despite all Banning’s weirdness, the bride and groom had chosen this place for us, and it gave us insight into their tastes and lives and priorities. They had taken the time.

They liked this Hampton Inn on the side of the freeway next to the old dance hall that played Sinatra and served steaming onion rings. I wasn’t sure if my grandpa had liked motels or found them low-class. I couldn’t even guess how he might have felt about them.

We checked in with a receptionist who had a thick Southern accent. The quiet still hanging on our group, I wanted to fill the space. I asked her questions about herself as she jabbed at the keyboard with two fingers. She said she lived outside Banning in unincorporated territory. She enjoyed having wedding parties stay at the hotel but admitted it wasn’t common. She wore a loud, yellow nametag shaped like a duck, which I asked about. I was irritated that there was no one in the lobby, everything was so still. Where are the other wedding guests? She assured me the other guests had already arrived. The stillness of the hotel seemed unbearable, so I offered to get our bags from the car.

Outside, I stepped into the alley to smoke. A crackhead in a muumuu sat near the back of the alleyway. I stared too long, hoping she would talk to me. Instead, she gave me a toothless smile and lifted her dress in a way that was less like exposing herself and more like airing herself out. Even this felt deliberate. The bride and groom had decided. They had hand-picked that crackhead months ago and had found her the perfect muumuu. They had comfort in planning, every last detail. The air between us vibrated. I thought about scolding her for her crackhead way of life and all the poor choices. Or maybe telling her to fuck off because I had just lost someone and was in no mood.

My family was trying pick up the pieces of an unplanned life, probably trying desperately to plan in reverse now. Making funeral arrangements. Making calls. Trying to guess what a quiet man would want. Death is not like other life events. Somewhere in Northern California where my family was, my grandmother was fighting off bouts of tears to try to pick a headstone. And I was at a wedding. Or not even a wedding yet, but at the various scheduled events around a wedding.

After we settled into the room, we went to the welcome reception. It was held behind the Hampton Inn in their enclosed, outdoor pool area. It wasn’t directly attached, so we had to walk across the parking lot then swipe a key to get in. Helium balloons shivered in the heat. Schedules printed on floral paper were spread out across a table. The groom’s father cracked jokes about the charms of Banning. Everyone was happy and carefree, and I wanted people around.

My girlfriend and I took off our shoes and put our feet in the pool. Others joined us. Through the dark green fence, we pointed at rabbits hopping around the vacant lot next door. The smell of DEET wafted in the air. Someone at the party had thought ahead, of course. This family was thoughtful, caring. These chattering people were connected – no – they connected to each other through great effort. I could see that all around – great effort that they were willing to make.  

But soon the music was lost in a breeze that blew across the emptiness of Banning, and the party grew quiet. I was unsettled again. I went inside.

I sat alone in the hotel room on the edge of the bed. The lights were off, and the sheer curtain was drawn over the window. A yellowish street light cast a shadow across the room. I thought I felt a shift like a breeze, but the window was shut. I closed my eyes long enough to let that feeling rise. That feeling that maybe when I opened my eyes someone, some thing, would be standing near me. I invited it.  

I sucked in my breath suddenly and felt a chill. I fixed my eyes on a dark corner of the room.

“Hello?” I asked no one. I stared intently into the darkness, looking hard into a spot where I might have seen a nacreous vision emerge, shining with unfulfilled purpose.

That’s where he would have been. A goodbye, if any were to come, would have been here at midnight in Banning. I was the one who had flown across the country and just missed him. If anything were to accompany death in its lonely march, it would have come then.

I breathed out and thought of the acorns. My grandpa had given me quarters to clean their backyard when I was young. It was not manual labor, it was a very small yard, nothing more than a concrete patio with an old oak peering over their wall. The oak dropped acorns which hurt my grandmother’s bare feet. My grandfather gave me a bucket, and I would collect the acorns for quarters. He always waited inside, pulling the sliding glass door closed behind him to keep the AC in. Maybe he was reading or playing solitaire, I never knew what he did in there while I picked up acorns. I would pick them up until they were all gone or until I got tired and knocked on the sliding glass door. He was somewhere deep inside the house. It took several moments after my sharp, hollow tap on the door for him to appear. Then my grandpa would sit on the patio furniture and count the acorns. He doled out the quarters. Had he chosen this house with the small patio and the old oak? Had he even chosen the acorns? He sent me out there alone with a bucket to think about the work and the forthcoming quarters. He sent me to out there so he could enjoy a moment of silence. The intention is what matters.

So, I turned the lights back on, and I opened the hotel window to enjoy all the quiet California had to offer me.

Goldhood

I still eat string cheese

and sit on the kitchen counter.

Toe the acorns on our driveway from the oak,

smell the rain-stained concrete and

bright green, baby grass,

regrown after the fires.

The secrets I kept as a kid –

climbing Coyote Hill at night,

playing alone by the willow and the gutter,

burying the metal charm near Fifi’s place.

They’ve become spaces in me.

Snow globe worlds, contained but always shaken,

showering everything

with a dewy hue.

The slow settling of fantasies.

It was magic to me.

The uglier side of self-love is

the creeping disappointment that comes on

like a head cold –

that no one will ever do it

quite like me.

That even the story I tell

of my engagement is

better than the thing itself.

Everything born here is gold.

Everything but the hissing yellow street lamps,

the empty cul-de-sac,

the stream of cigarette smoke,

those four murders.

Everything else.