Quit Your Whining

You Are So Loved

If the path be beautiful

let us not question where it leads.

As Is

Vesta

Come, Vesta, to live in this beautiful home.
Come with warm feelings of friendship.
Bring your intelligence,
Your energy, and your passion
To join with your good work.
Burn always in my soul.
You are welcome here.
I remember you.

 - Homer

Penpals

I have something
inside me
that is
vestigial
and tickly
something that is
kept in tundra
and permafrost

where you can dip in

and make a refrigerator

out of mostly peat moss
that not even the wolves
watching you do it
will later
nose around

that's my
vestigial little organ lined up floating
on the windowsill
golden!
in the afternoon light
with the pickles, and beans, and jelly/jams

really
its my happy thought
for today

being my own organ
past due
catching up with you
huddled and cuddling
underground

swimming and swirling
in lit up
preservatives
I'm smiling at you through
the glass, the distortions

that keep us apart, airtight. I never
mind them. kissy kissy
kiss, no hiss. Only then,

good

night.

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It was years later, on a Sunday evening in the Higgins Conference Room at the hospital, with the murky clipper ship painting hanging overhead, addressing the group, that he would say the truth of what happened that night.

I asked her to go and get the camera, he said. Just so we could tell Joshua about it later, show the evidence and have a picture to tell the whole story, if it became important to do that. Managing levels of truth for age, something we do all the time. So she walked out of the room to get the camera, and it took me less than that long to do it.

To drink the vodka. To drink the vodka, in a paper cup, that we had just euthanized Josh's betta fish in. We were humane people. One of the first bettas had grown a tumor and had started to die a slow, slow, slow death. One night it was evident that the reigning betta at the time was too heavy with tumor to make the surface for air anymore, and I distracted Josh, turning the fish light in the aquarium off, making lots of jokes and being more fooly at bedtime than usual.

That fish I took out of the tank with a net as soon as Josh was asleep, having quickly googled about pithing, and having prepped the back porch with block of wood, nail, hammer, and washcloth for grip. Only the nail was too small. I drove it clear and true through that fish's head on the first strike, but when I pulled the nail out, the fish started flipping all over the place. I had no bigger nail and it took two more strikes, two more holes, the sum of their diameters, to kill that fish's brain. My heart was up in my throat by the end of it.

Pithing. There are tools, you don't use a nail. You insert the pithing tool inside the fish's brain, and you destroy the brain, shred it to bits. People live with projectiles and gunshots that go clean through the head and miss the critical parts all the time. Same principle. You know about that, you've seen it on TV a million times, but you don't put it together when you're in a rush to try to euthanize your kid's pet. You're rushing. Not connecting principles and information.

So I had prepared for the next time. I had re-googled, and learned about the clove-oil/vodka method. Claire went to borrow a half glass of vodka from the neighbors, it being Sunday night, and all liquor stores closed. I had the clove oil from the natural foods store already. I took distilled water, poured it in, shook it hard, made an emulsion. I got some oil on my hands and it burned a little. I read somewhere to be careful about that because clove oil was maybe a carcinogen.

We put the clove oil water in the paper cup, which held Comet the fish with his tumor and near-death jerks and sinks and own aquarium water. He shot back and forth maybe five times, as I poured the emulsion in, and I know Claire and I both seized in our guts: how ugly was this going to get. But then he laid over on his side and floated down, deep asleep, anesthetized, just as the google pages said he would be. And I picked him up and transferred him over into the vodka, which killed him for good.

Opportunity, he told the group. That is what the obsession is. You are doing nothing but waiting on silent radar for opportunity, even after months, even after years, even when you think that part of you is dead and gone. You are WAITING he said, his voice rising, and the group sitting up a little more, adjusting coats, refolding hands.

He paused. I drank the vodka. She left the room, and I had no time to waste. I took it in one hand, cup of vodka and fish, a huge shot down my throat, while slowly pouring aquarium water into the sink with the other hand which Claire would hear and assume was the vodka. Because I don't drink anymore.

And I was rushed, he said. I was COMPELLED. And that fish went right down my throat, like the worm at the end of a tequila bottle. I belched air laced with clove for days after that.

After years of marital wreckage, and detox, and couples counseling, and family counseling, and 6 years of sobriety, and seven sponsors, and a thousand AA meetings, I became obsessed in less than a second to take a huge shot of my own sworn poison, and my son's dead fish. And I was COMPELLED to lie to Claire when she came in just seconds afterwards, with the camera, to make a fist pretending to have the fish in it, and smile as relaxed at her as I could. To LIE. To smile at her, gently, and say I think I will just take him and bury him out in the garden, we'll just tell Josh in the morning.

To see what your wife's face looks like as you say this, the vodka moments from hitting your brain and making you feel like everyone else, but warmer - to not be able to UNDERSTAND what that look on her face is. Because you just pulled it all off and covered it up, and its a 10 out of 10 move and it doesn't count, won't count, because these circumstances you did not premeditate, and they will be unlikely to happen again, so you are still settled comfortably in your six years and your recovery of family, faith, trust, and spirit.

He looked at the table, hands flat to either side. Mismatched books holding the flags from sliding off: Just for Today, on the right; Live and Let Live, on the left.

You have an aquamarine blue shred of fin stuck on your tooth, is what her brain is trying to process, and what that look on her face is about, he told the group. And that is why you will keep coming here, and you will always, always be sick. You will always be one second away from having a fin on your tooth while you tell a lie to your wife with your hand fisted around an invisible fish.

Alcohol, he said, makes you crazy. Alcohol in your body makes you go insane. That is what this disease does.

And with that, the group stood, and shuffled out from behind the rows of chairs to make a circle and hold hands, with him, in the Higgins Conference Room, while someone intoned

Who's father?

And the group answered,

Our Father

and began the Lord's Prayer, heads bowed, clipper ship murking on forward through its murky painted water, indifferent to the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, and Forever, and

Keep coming back, it Works.

Untitled

Xena November 16, 2010 at 10:33 pm

Tonight I called out sincerely to Ethan while looking up at the kitchen ceiling. I even tried to drop my squeaky sniveling tone that makes him cringe. I was crying and somewhat repetitive but confident. I didn’t hear his voice or see any clear signs of him but he is sneaky so I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves something subtle. What if there is an afterlife and maybe he is there sitting on a cloud or sleeping on a bench. Ethan may still play the trumpet everyday and maybe he is even meeting new people. He could also be transformed into a pack of crows with no idea that he was once Ethan. I wonder if he will send a post card. I always got his attention before when I started rushing the gravy or mixing salt improperly. Maybe I should try that now do those things that he just couldn’t stand to watch me ruin. I wonder if he is blind there without his eyes. I miss making him laugh and chuckle and find himself unexpectedly joyful in a dull part of life. I miss tackling him. This afterlife place feels so far away where is the consciousness of Ethan?

The Dahlia Lounge

It Was A Great Cause For Celebration

Shipshape

I Never Forgave Myself for Leaving a Man Behind

Listening

At Great Speeds

Untitled

Relicts

Untitled

The air, this morning, is
a perfectly
ripe honeydew melon. I am eating
without eating,
delicious fruit. The place where
my face fits in
the hollow of your neck
is a gingersnap. It
wakes me up and then
satiates me. There are nine
butterflies
on this bush, and they
rise up in a shimmery cloud
everytime I walk by
and then settle
wings open
drinking nectar and
inviting the sun. Everything
feasts on everything. This is how
it is today and how
I remember it being
and how it was
until it wasn't or
until it is again. I don't know
for sure. You
let me know. Let me know please
the story
behind it all.
Until then
honeydew, gingersnap, nectar, feast.

Untitled

The fuck it is, Jeanina says. And she is right. I
say Pass, because
whathefuckdoiknow

about sitting, writing, in my underwear
loathing my rolls
wondering if they will go away

with a good bleed
or when its less humid
and I cut the shit with the chips and the salt
or two months, sober, the exact time it took to do
this damage
backwards

I'm just trolling. Pass. What the
fuckdoIknow
about praying, and talking to God
meditation:
as I understand Him. 

I'll just sit here and look at your
ankle monitors.

You, Jeanina. Jesus for you.

She Said

"I will do all I can to save you, with my skills and my survival kit. "

Meg

Untitled

Source

For the first time in years, I couldn't sleep.

Untitled

What Do You Taste Like?

Is everyone in agreement, or do you taste different to you, like the sound of your voice heard in your own head?

I am, myself, a Contender.

Choice

We can stick with the automatic, or eat somewhere else where I can hear you better.

I Was There: It Fell From the Sky

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, A Book of Verse - and Thou
     Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

1048 - 1241 AD

Veracity

Sometimes, I get tired of you. I think the truth is good to say, even if not invited, or welcomed.

Go to sleep, you little baby.

You don't have to do a thing. We've got it covered. I even remembered the watermelon, slicing it up, while cold: everyone came to enjoy it later

when it was leftovers. or our favorite thing.

To Be Welcomed

Heliacal Sirius

Seepage

Private always bleeds through us
Brick, rock, concrete: all
holes, soft membranes, chinks somewhere.

The Truth Is: We're All Alone, We're Never Alone

Untitled

We walked a beach blaze, then fog
I found the starfish
You said, OK, this one time.

Morning Papers

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

 - "Animals", Frank O'Hara

Living brings you death; there is no other road.

 - Galway Kinnell

All flesh is grass.

- ISAIAH 40:6

As we spoke, you and I,
of how the sky at sunset hits the earth
gaily flung notes sounded
of some bird's birding

     I was that bird in an instant.
     The music fell like fiery drops within my ribcage.
     I felt the tones -
     felt them and yearned - and smiled at you and your sunset.

Some day if we trust one another long enough
with care and worth
I'll ask you if you heard that house wren.

     You'd remember.

 - Rudolph W. Nemser

Each of us is an artist
Whose task it is to shape life
Into some semblance of the pattern
We dream about. The molding
Is not of self alone, but of shared
Tomorrow and times we shall never see.
So let us be about our task.
The materias are very precious
     and perishable.

 - Arthur Graham

Untitled

Last night I was sitting in a wingback chair in a little-used common area on the dementia unit typing fast. It was beautiful summer outside, and Owen's soccer game started at 5:00. Matt called at 5:17: can you make it, can you pick him up? I closed my laptop and reconciled to a little work at home, which I try not to do. Yes, I'll make it.

I waved at H., and G., and J., all patients of mine, on my way out. Wednesday is my Friday: I'll see you all next week. I stepped out the front door, going quickly, careful with the door not to bump any of the female residents sitting on the two benches just outside the door that flank it.

I stopped. L. was sitting on the end of one bench, neatly dressed. Waiting for his grandson, he said, to go to the memorial service for B., his wife, who died a month ago. For all the residents who have died in the past few months. The facility was having the service upstairs rather than the porch, and L. wanted to be sure his grandson went to the right place.

I came to see L. when he first came on service. His wife, B., was quiet, and would sit and listen while L. and I talked. Rarely joined in. Both of them always in their same chairs, every visit, for most of a year. Then B. was sick, and L. came down with it too. Both of them side by side in twin beds congested and feverish. B. came on service then, and didn't get better. I sat on a chair in between the two of them in their shadowy room, holding each of their hands, B. with eyes open but silent, hot, covers down and fan on, L. tucked up to his chin with blankets and tears streaming down his face. B. quiet as always. L. telling me everything, all the friends shot to death beside him in the war, all the blood and organs spilling, all the chaos, all the screams and moans and dirt and wet and cold. B. was in the Navy, served in active areas, though I still don't know what she did, or saw. L. chiding himself for crying. Me telling him its better to cry and tell, how much comfort he was to B., to be there beside her in all her days, her last days, all of their 62 years together. I came everyday for all of that week and held their hands in their room just like that.

I came to see L. on the morning of B.'s funeral. He, against odds, and how no one knows, recovered. He was in his dark suit, wheel chair today, rather than rolling walker with tennis balls cut over the front feet of it. We walked down the hall with his family together. Elevator. I held the door. The limousine was waiting. I gave L. my hands and helped him up from the chair, steadied him. Kissed his cheek and he kissed mine. Said I would be thinking of B., what a graceful and strong soul she was, and be thinking of him too, and sending courage, and solace. Which I did. He took his own few steps to the limousine, family on either side, but no one touching. Letting him take his steps.

L. came back from the war. He carried mail by foot for 30 years. He had children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He has a good outlook, a nice word for anybody. I go see him every week since B. died, and she looks at us from a large silver-framed photograph. L. sits in different places now. Never in the chair where he always used to. I sit there now.

And here is L. sitting outside. My first time to ever see him outside, at 5:19, on my Friday, on pace to catch the last 15 minutes of Owen's soccer game which I didn't think I would get to do. I'm in a blue striped dress and yellow cardigan and orange canvas mary jane's and an orange watch and a bright silver and yellow daisy necklace. And my blue lanyard, with my photo, and name: Betsy D., LICSW. I can hear Tim Gunn say, that's a lot of look. But its one of the first summery days, and why not. Matt Davis checked me this morning, at my request, before I left. Its bright, he said, and smiled. It looks good.

I extend my hand to L. and he takes it. Looks up at me. I am always surprised at how small he is. I will think of B., I said. You were such comfort to her that last week. You were right by her side. I will think of you too, and I wish you strength, and peace, for the service.

He thanks me. He smiles. He says, you look like a million bucks. He asks, do you know why I say that? No, I say, and smile. Because its true, he says, and he laughs, and I laugh, and he pulls my hand down and I come closer in and give his cheek a kiss and he kisses me back. His grandson arrives and L. looks so pleased with all of this, young people coming and going, on a summer evening.

Last night I sat in the grass in the sun and watched the rest of Owen's soccer game from the opposite side of the field from where his team was. I was surprised at how red and hot his cheeks were, how fast he was running, even at the end of a long day and long game. I sat talking to D. about cabins and lodges and caring for aging parents, and Owen surprised me by showing up in a ball in my lap, sitting up, giving me a kiss. He is so stingy with kisses. I have to go back, just a mom kiss break he says, and peals away.

I call J., L.'s nurse, and leave her a voicemail describing the scene of L. holding court over me and the other ladies in the sunshine, and thank her for taking care of him so that he has that moment, that evening, family, friends, a kiss on the cheek. She calls me back today and leaves on my voicemail, thank you for that message, I love that message.

Monday is Memorial Day. I'm off, with Matt and Owen and Molly, though just today I think about how it would be nice to go see L. on Monday and say thank you, and listen to anything he wants to say, and go see all the other patients I have who I know served, and say thank you, and listen to anything they want to say. Its hard to decide which to do.

Granite

Le Vent Rouge

Everywhere

Jimmy Can Live in My Attic Too

Mass

Never Mind the Propaganda

Horse and Pony Show

Untitled

Silence
radio off
so loud I

swim down
as a mermaid
to the Mariana trench

and lay down
drowned, or sleeping

in a million years I'm
a striation
a stripe
a red stripe

with the wind whistling over me

fossilized, just
one thing to the next

if you caught it all on film
and sped it up

without voiceover
narration
explanation

that's the wonder
of what it means
of why I did it
why any of it happened
whether it was drowning, or sleeping, or a
singular act of
transcendence

whether the truth
about mermaids

is that they are silent
or sirens
or at all.

Untitled

It was undoubtedly sweet
in the same way that red grapes are
when they have been in the refrigerator for
some time and have
softened. A flash of
something, pain, surprise, or
just unexpected sensation
from the cold of a grape
rendered by teeth in a hot mouth. She breathes
into the microphone
singing in a whisper with her
eyes closed
Remember me just a little
I don't have any comment on
any of her doings
or her song
except to say

know if you are asking
or telling
or if you're just enjoying a moment with
yourself and the
rest of the grapes.

I Did Not Give Myself Permission

Phyllis, and With the Years You Have Left

Enter

Fort Point Channel/Thursday/3 months

Untitled

Today I knelt down on B.'s floor mats and didn't say anything, or touch him. I got down to eye level, and tried to be in my whole body, with my whole self. B. had eyes open, looked at the ceiling mostly, once looked at me but through me. He tremored, he shook.

B. had a strawberry farm earlier in his life. I've seen the photo, blown up, him kneeling in the dirt, with a couple of other guys, caps on, smiling at the camera and holding fruit in their hands.

Oh, B. Who despite his frailty, still has a strong and to me handsome face. Something nice in his eyes. I slipped my hand to curve into his, and he squeezed lightly. Holding it.

Oh B. I would like to bring you strawberries, warm from the sun, break them into tiny pieces and put them in your mouth gently with my fingers. Have a bowl of rich damp soil to hold under your nose.

Today there was a catchy tune on your roommate's TV. It had the words love in it a lot - love is the thing, what do you love, something like that.

You looked at me and not through me. You said, slow but clear, I love you. Tapping your other hand in time to the music on the bedsheets.

I don't know where you are, where you go, most of the time. I hope its wonderful, in its fragmentation, in your brain. Like a kaleidoscope turning and turning with images that keep you in wonder. How does the brain work, do the things wrong in your brain also affect your dreams, or do you dream more clearly, less kaleidoscope, more memory? Do you hear yourself talk and do people answer you in your dreams. Do you do whatever it is you want to do there. Do you walk, have a kiss, wake up, find things.

I do love you too B. You are good, that comes through from you, just by looking at you. I loved to hold your hand today. I loved to have my skin on your skin and both of us having once eaten strawberries, picked from the plants in the dirt, warm from the sun.

That's where I am with you, with your neighbor's TV, with your fall mats and chart and draw sheet and tremors and eyes that open wide for no reason I can tell, here and there.

I meet you in the field. I think you're still a little bit in the field. I do love you, as you are. I tell you so.

I'm glad you're here. I'm glad I get to be yours and you get to be mine a little bit. I'll help you go when the time comes. I'll see you in the field.

This Day

This day I watched the

pleur evac drain. I did not leave the room

for modesty, or to have a look around, for clues

about what makes this particular situation here so. Fridges,

pictures on fridges, bedside tables, pictures on the walls -

that's how you know. I watched how a hose in the

flesh can go through and drain into a bottle, serous fluid, little blood,

any hose, any fluid.

Its the first day of spring after a warm and dry winter. I

sit out by the river, fast and deep, and if you took a sip? Can you take a sip

of it? Safely? Its the Merrimack, a huge bounty,

or a waterway. Water in with tide, out with tide. Boats on top. Can you take a

sip, if you're thirsty?

We'll be irrigating by late spring. Everything is so early. Weeks early, a month early.

Daffodils, you came today, you were due in April. An azalea in a sunny spot

burst into purple, like so what, so what.

I wrote, GLORIOUS. I got asked, please make that call outside

I can't have that traced to this house. We'll keep evacuating the fluid until

maybe, the pleural space will close. All the crocuses close up

at night, still chilly. Its only March.

He'll still die. In his situation. I left the house, as asked. I wish his body well, folds

of stomach skin pooched down, face a little gray. It wasn't personal.

What was personal was GLORIOUS. A review of intentions, which is a lot to

1. take on

2. get back to.

You can't doodle it. Also, it will need bigger paper, and to be

rewritten. March this year is rewritten as April. Backwards, forwards. Ocean

tide, driving the river in, pulling it out, boats on top. Perhaps then, yes,

things aren't as in control as we think they are.

I'm not thirsty. I talk, I say a few things, the phone radio shuts off mid-sentence,

because there is no radio

with a battery this low. I was battered, you know.

GLORIOUS. Everything, in some fashion, and including the

pleur evac, is draining. Time runs out. Unfailingly.

Les fleurs. Early this spring, later on your grave, in a field to pick. Roadside.

Color neither serous nor bloody. Today, yellow. Today, purple.

Tide is coming in. The phone is off. River runs backwards.

A sip is risky. The early bloom is risky, in March.

I'll watch. I will, unfailingly, find out what happens.

I have the absolute intention to, I do not intend at all. Find out what happens.

Nous espérons qu'il va pleuvoir.

That would

solve everything.

10%

Two weeks ago I got sent home from work for being too sneezy and waxy-looking. We all really like each other at work, but if you look like you're infectious, you are chucked.

I got into my pajamas at 4:15 on a Wednesday afternoon and didn't get out of them until Friday night. By Sunday I was better enough not to be able to move around much, but to be able to do quiet things.

I finished my palliative care modules for work. It takes about 24 hours to complete the certification and I was halfway there. Somewhere buried in the 500 pages of detail about the benefits of hydromorphone use for somatic pain and the hepatic effects of hyperkalemia, there was this statistic: about 10% of people die suddenly, and the rest die after a period of decline and debility. I really didn't know that before I read it.

That was two weeks ago and it sat with me; on the following morning I woke up a little heavy, with some doom, another day also heavy and with doom. Three days ago, heavy, doom, and driving over the bridge on the way to work it came to me why.

10%. 10% of my friends, all the children I know including my own, my family, my parents and friends' parents and older friends. They will go in their sleep, keel over in the garden, drop to the floor. And the worst of it will be the accounting for all of those left behind: what last words were, what was said, what was known, what wasn't. Gratitudes and regrets, as everyone has, but without warning or notice to try to rectify anything or tip a balance. The status of things, at the moment of truncation, satisfactory or not.

In four and a half years I've admitted and helped take care of hundreds of patients. Some for years, some for hours. Every single one of them, as part of my admission, I ask about suicidal ideation. If they can't answer, then I ask and assess for it from someone in the family, or from the caregiver who knows them best. Thoughts, plans, intent, means. Every one of my assessments, the answer has been the same check box: no plans. I have had patients who wished for death to come. Who were ready. Who could articulate, please, I just want to die now. But never have I been asked to do anything to aid them to plan a suicide, or hasten death, or overdose them or stop doing any of the things we as caregivers were doing to take care of their ongoing simultaneously living and dying bodies.

I have had five loved ones and family members of patients in four and a half years who were suicidal, four of whom accepted referrals for care, one I had to track down and arrange to have involuntarily hospitalized to keep safe and give him treatment for an already existing mental illness, and a chance to reconsider, whether in fact he did want to shoot himself with his gun. That was two years ago; I saw him in the grocery store the other day, though he did not recognize me. He reconsidered.

I don't know the average prevalence for a suicidal person. 1 in 400? 1 in 500? I'm lazy; the statistic is somewhere.

When I talk about what I do to friends and family and describe my patients there is sometimes recoil; the very idea of living in a diminished physical and mental state, in a diminished environment, possible meaninglessness, the idea of being trapped in mind and body, and also burdensome on lots of levels. To family, to the fiscal well being of the country. On principle.

The dying of people is hardest on the living left, I believe, who witness them decline, and debilitate, and go. I think the body, as it knows so much and as I teach to my families often, knows what its doing when it dies. Hunger stops, thirst stops, dehydration produces a euphoria and natural pain protection. IV fluids and nutrition don't help a body in multisystem organ failure that is shutting down. It floods it with food and fluid burden that can't be processed: it has to go somewhere, so its vomited, third spaced into lungs causing congestion and living drowning, third spaced into soft tissues causing so much edema that the skin itself begins to weep, and the heart begins to fail under all the strain.

So no. Most of us will not keel over and be spared all that we fear about our respective diminishments. But somehow, I am beginning to think, the body has its inbuilt wisdom, and knows what its doing. It does not spur the mind and spirit to despair, and become hopeless, and suicidal. Has it been studied? Is there a biopsychosocial process that occurs, like thirst and hunger, in the dying process, that allows for a freedom from doom, and depression, freedom from a sense of daily intolerability, freedom from an active and immediate wish for death to come, and all to end. I wonder if you compared populations of the very much living and the close to dying, and matched them for the variables: is there something protective, from some unknown mechanism, that allows for an acceptance, or at least a truce with what is, for the dying. That gives a natural resiliency and acceptance of what most of us say about now, if I'm like that, just take me out back and shoot me.

10%. One gift and one damnation of being around dying people all the time is the prescience, beyond what I think I ought rightfully to know at my age and station in life, of what's to come.

I will likely be old. Chances are, I will likely slowly accumulate this and that, and diminish in many ways.

There are about 10 people in my life, where if I could have my wish come true, I would want to take care of them as they die. I would want the chance to love them in that way, which is unlike any other way I know of loving them so far. Its love when you take care of someone at the end of their life, whether you are hands on or simply present. It is intimate. It is an exchange. I have a picture of a hand holding a crow clipped to my fridge: sometimes we give and receive comfort at the same time. Its an intimacy unlike any other experience in a relationship: I would want that intimacy, with them.

I have another 10 at least that I would want to take care of, for the comfort it would bring them, but mostly because of the comfort it would bring my original 10. Their spouses, their parents they're on good terms with, and I hope never, their child. Even the pets.

And then it goes up to about 30. People who are not my intimates, but who deserve it, and who I would give it for in a heartbeat.

Three of them will drop dead, maybe. 27 I would have a chance at, to give my love, in this way.

Except I will be old too. And have debility, and decline. I won't be who I am now. I won't get to, in all likelihood, love them that way. A few perhaps: early onset of something, bad genetics. And who will accept that love from me, because its a shared thing, not something you do on someone.

So on the bridge the other day, that was that. My own anticipatory grief. For what I won't be able to do, for what I won't be able to give, for who I will not be able to go to.

I would know what to do more than most. I would know how to handle contracted hands, and have a laugh, and be in that moment, that day, and be quiet, and reminisce. I would know the people I love so well and also have all this experience and practice and be able to combine them and do wonders for my friends and family that I love so much.

You accept the things you can't change. I can't change that one. I don't wish any of the people I love so much an early onset and decline, just so I can love them up that way, express how I feel about them in that way. I have to trust them: we will all do our dying, and the people I love I will have to have trust in, and have faith in, that they will do their dying to the best that they can, without me. With what they've got, at that point in their lives. It gives me comfort that in four and a half years, something protective I can't name and don't understand, is activated, and slow long drawn out dying over years or months is not experienced by patients as a horror show or damned fate, but as somehow, simply mostly OK.

None of my friends would probably understand or know why I have anticipatory grief for the fact I will not be able to give them all the love I have for them. That I'm a little sad, and sorry, that I won't be able to offer and give and engage that part of our friendship. That's my prescience, for someone my age.

I wish I could. I wish I could take care of your contracted hands, fragile skin, tell you the truth, love you that way.

Louis C.K. was on NPR, and Terry Gross said, Louis, you seem to see the world as this incongruous mix of terribleness, absurdity, and beauty.

I agree.

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One day,

I will come to visit you again. You will have

a rolled up washcloth

or actual therapy soft carrots

inserted in your palms

to prevent pain and slow the progression

of your contracting hands

and to keep your nails from cutting your palms. Will

you know me? I will adjust your

washcloths, your hand carrots, I

will remember your fingers going

lightly over the guitar, and what it was like to listen,

not knowing if that sound you made was what you intended

what you heard inside

and tried to make come out. I will kiss your cheek. I will

run a washcloth under hot water

and clean your eyes, wiping from the corners outwards, then down

your same eyes, and smile lines, your same you. I'll

give you a sip, and tell you swallow, swallow, while running one finger

under your chin and down your throat

to cue you. I'll say it in the same tone I used to give you

advice in, when I thought I knew better than you. If she loves you

and you know she's not it for you

let her go. Get a physical. Get one every year. Juice is better than plain

water, if you've been

vomiting a lot. Start with that.

I'll arrange your hair, your sheets and quilt. I'll talk to you

just the same and tell you

at some point

that you're an asshole

and you make me furious. I will

delight in your company. Here, a little vaseline for your lips. I will

whisper a few sweet things in your ear

good man, good-hearted soul. You are loved.

I'll always visit. I'll always come.

I'll tend you some, and then sit, and hold your hand, and

rub it gently with my thumb

and tell you stories. True ones and old ones

and ideas I have that you'd have said about once

that is absurd,

that'll never happen.

Are We Doing OK?

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I see you in mists

in vapors

in dreams

Its inconvenient

Its there

its gone

its lovely

Every day comes.

Planks I Walk

Crossings

My love for you

this time

is at dusk. There's a

concrete curb poured

on top of an asphalt drive, and I

step up from

asphalt, to concrete, and think of

the exact feel of you, if you

were in my path, and my next step

took me into you, against you, just where

my cheek would press on you, and my

legs against your legs, and myself

on yourself, and your warm breath without

a word, one robin we both hear, a

few cars gone by, a mass of

dark clouds to the south, three-quarters

moon and dampness in the cold, because

we're above freezing, we choose

to stand on the concrete, on top of

the asphalt, on top of the crust of

the whole world, pressing, hearing

most things, seeing

some things, feeling temperature, smelling as

much as you do when its this

cold, stopped in our tracks

pressing, with evening

falling around us, and

night coming fast, and

pressing together, for now.

You Can Take It

Have Two, Should

Sixteen Days

Fifteen Days

Berkeley Hills

We all live on a slope

that rises from the sea

disguised by streets, houses we like,

walkable shopping areas. Every

night, when we lay down in our beds

we make a pattern of bodies

laid out on a slope

disguised by the houses and streets and relatively

empty spots of the shopping areas,

and parks, where not as many sleep. Its us, the houses,

the beds, and the ground that is sloped. The houses and

beds let us hover over it. Sometimes some of us

are away traveling, sleeping other places

or having company, having more sleepers in our areas. That's the variation

in our pattern. Occasionally

new permanent addition. Baby. The fiancé from Chicago

who moved here, for you.

Every night, its a pattern, and in the

quietest part, say 3:12am, when the

pattern is its most formed, and still, we

peel away from our bodies, and skim down the slope

and go out far over the sea

and hold our collective pose, presenting our permutation that night

to the blind skin of the rolling sea

to anything below, that might be looking up,

and see our moonlit outline.

In the morning, we break ranks, and move freely

you there, spot D54, in our grid, now standing in front of me

awaiting your latte, and you

spot L271, whom I stop for to let cross the

street, whose long

nightgown hem I saw touch the surface of the ocean

last night, is the reason you're crossing

here now, to go buy detergent, for laundry day.