I don't feel like writing anymore.
I don't have anything else to say to you.
Nothing in my head is worth telling you.
Just stop. Ok?
I'm fighting with Linda daily. Directly and indirectly.
I didn't even know it.
It didn't used to be this way. We used to be friends.
She hired me to do a good job, I thought.
She got me a paycheck when I was losing my house.
I am ever grateful. I work hard but
Sometimes when you do a really good job for someone, they feel like you're changing them,
Like you're taking something from them.
Sometimes I have dreams I remember. Sometimes I have dreams that are familiar.
There's one in a classroom, where I'm sitting at my desk beside my classmates,
And the teacher is a tall dark ghost
Who we love very much.
He says to us, "Today we will learn how to drown,"
And we are eager to learn well to please.
A cataract explodes into the room and we scream
It knocks aside desks and homework papers
Tossing us like autumn playground leaves
My classmates and I, flailing to stay afloat in the white foaming current
Screaming in joy, then horror,
When the water hits the lungs the chest convulses
The sinuses burn
The eyes wide we grasp for each other
First to cling then to climb atop
Stretching against each other, kicking upward for air
Forcing each other into the bubbling
Until we can't be any more afraid or hurt
And there is no more air
Only silence.
Then we are back in our desks before the dark ghost we love so much
"We will have to practice that, won't we?" he says.
We stare at our clasped hands on our desks.
"Don't feel ashamed," he says, "It's hard. We'll practice."
"I'll get it right," I promise.
I wake up
And I'm still telling him I'll get it right.
When I was young I was visited by angels
Who came at night
From lights outside.
They took me from my bed
To other places and terrified me,
Tried to teach me things I had no interest to learn.
These angels were like ghosts in the night.
It seemed they weren't any holier than me
And somewhat selfish.
When I got older and had children of my own
They came for the children
Told me I'd had my time so I should stand by.
One night I'd had enough. I made them stop.
It was easier than I thought.
"Get out of my life."
"You can't mean that," said one tall angel.
"Oh, but I do. I never want to see you again."
"It's a mistake, but ok."
And now almost 20 years later
I still wake up in the middle of the night expecting them to be there
But they're not
They kept their promise
And left me alone
Totally alone.
The phone people turned off my internet.
The bill hadn't been paid.
"But it's on autopay," I said to the guy. "It takes my money."
"For some reason it's not working."
"Please turn it back on."
"Yes, we will."
My garage door broke and the guy came to fix it but he didn't have a part.
So he left to get it
Two weeks ago.
My floor needs kick molding and I called the guy to buy some
He said, "Ok, I'll get it,"
And then a month went by and I called him and he said,
"I forgot to tell you, I can't get it.
I'm sorry."
The city is tearing up the street in front of my house and
Left a big hole in front of my driveway
So my Audi bottoms out and rocks puncture the oil pan.
Which I find out when I get to work
To fight with Linda
Who acts as if I've stolen her soul
By doing the job she hired me to do.
Last night.
I had a dream I remember
Of the lights in the sky outside my bedroom window
The clock radio beside my bed turning itself on
Blue and orange lights glowing where there was darkness
And the voice I remember
Not loving, not gentle
But for me.
I'm as afraid as I was when I was young because I know they will speak.
I'm terrified because I can't control this.
Because I'm a rat in a cage.
And I remember, it doesn't seem any of this is for my benefit
And I can't stop them.
I tell my wife, trying to be brave, "It's ok. This is what happens.
It's ok," but it's not.
From my radio
"It's time for you to come out, now."
"Explain how this life is supposed to work. I mean,
Can't you tell me that by now, after all
These years?"
"It's time for you to come out, now," says the mechanical, theoretical voice.
"What if I don't?"
The radio goes dark.
The beautiful lights in the sky scatter like butterflies.
I prayed,
If it's a dream is it not real?
Does it tell me nothing, when it feels so much?
What do I lose by hoping?
What is gained by believing in emptiness?
At work yesterday I remembered a lesson
Taught by the tall dark ghost
I love so much
"Things are not sequential," he said.
"your mind is sequential, but real things are elsewise and elsewhen."
I wish I could stay with him, but he sends me off.
Always sends me off.
Things are not sequential.
So something I think
Should have happened first
Didn't.
There is a passage in a book I read today.
It was not a religious book but it said, anyway
"You are Lazurus in the tomb. Dead and Christ is calling you.
'It's time to come out, now.' You think you are safe and dead in your cave
But soon he will knock down the walls
And there will be no cave."
I remember these dreams
But I live on earth.
It seems more important here.
Maybe it's not.
Things happen to me everyday,
Magic things to which I'm inured,
Which I ignore.
And I go to work and argue with Linda
For money to pay my bills.
Every morning I take handfuls of pills
Like my grandparents used to do,
And wonder how long it can go on.
I remember another lesson given by my beloved,
What a mistake I made,
For whom I would do anything to see again,
"You don't know what a miracle you are."
Wake up,
Wake up.