From Everybody Makes Mistakes

An Accident

People got no respect for the dead, they roll new plans out neatly. But into a morning exploding with red, I awoke completely – an accident. Though you smile so sweetly above your congregational coffee, in the town where I was born – an accident.

Well, Benjamin, you crashed your plane again - a beautiful tailspin. It was going to happen soon enough, the only question was when, because I could smell the flames sleeping on your skin. I love you for the things you do, and I don’t care who you do them to. You can wrap your stupid suffering around me. Because I thought it out, in the time I’ve got, and I don’t care if I drown or not: I just want to crash into that same cold sea. On an airport “USA Today,” in a dark black ballpoint pen, you write these people are like skeletons wrapped up in perfumed skin. And it’s such a stupid sentiment, but write it once again. Let your anger fill the margins and I’ll kiss your shaking hand. Because I love you for the things you see, and I don’t mind if you see me - with my wrinkled hands and glazed eyes - as obscene. You’re right in ways that you don’t know, and you’re untouched by the undertow. All that speed and anger burns your body clean. And I love you for the things you feel so thoroughly that they turn real, as the sea comes rushing toward us, dark and cold. And your rowmate, this nonentity, as the screams and salt sea smother me, will reach out a wrinkled hand for you to hold. But now the landing gear is starting to unfold. The captain points the runway out below, where the Kent account is waiting to be sold, and where you’re going, down there, I don’t know.

When no one else would suffer me, I threw myself at your ankles. So still we slept and were at peace above the winter traffic. He treats his friends like customers, he treats me like a given, your letter read. Come down, you said, and let me know I’m living. Soon, come.

Oh Michelle, where we dwell there is room for mistakes. We’d make love on the fire escape, and, as the neighbors all drove by, their exhaust would spiral into the sky. Now you pick your earrings up off the nightstand while I switch from my arm to my hand as the morning streams through the blinds, then I wake up again and it’s 12:09. And we lived out of town, with no one to come around, so we slept in all day, until your job took you away. Now Michelle, your smell won’t leave my bed. I dreamed of a doctor, here’s what he said: “It’s just as well as you’re going to get.”

“After all the times you’ve been turned around, will you never be ready now? After all the times that we stood your ground, will you never be steady now? And of course we’ll send the check, you can just write in the amount – just let us know the house and town. So if you’re going to wreck you can still be safe and sound. And just let us know and we’ll come down. Everybody makes mistakes - some do most of all. I just don’t have what it takes, they’re singing as they fall. Everybody makes mistakes, some more than the rest. And that’s what some do best. But you won’t be distressed, you say I’ll break all the way down, and then all these pieces will be easy to sort out. Well, we can’t wait.”

“Up from your room, down to the yard. You always took your mistakes so hard. Down to the side-strip covered in weeds. You always took so much more than you need. ‘Describe the driver, describe the car.’ You always took your mistakes so hard. Up from the city, down through the trees. You always took so much more than you need.”

Should I close my eyes and get in that line, hold my bags in file with the boarders? Should I take your name down on a pencilled list or a tape recorder? Should I take you down in the nighttime to the banks by the deep black water? Time will make you mine in an hour’s time, time will make you older. They’re pulling wreckage from the lake all night and day outside my window. The sky was quiet, cold, and wide the night they died above my pillow. And God will take care of us, at least some of us, at least those of us that He wants, and disappear from most of us, keep clear from most of us, besides those of us that He haunts.

Let’s start all over. Let’s do it right. One drive to Dover. One overnight. All of them waiting for you to appear, and no more worrying, no more tears. Warm sun is shining. Green trees surround. All of your favorite songs, they’re counting them down. And there’s a Safeway, and Toys ‘R’ Us. Baby-blue Camaro, Rhode Island bus. One day you’ll look back upon right now, and all sad feelings will be taken out.

In South Carolina, I was struck by lightning. The world was a ball on a tether, my body as light as the weather. The moon was like an almond, the continents dissolving. I lay on my back in the garden looking for any safe harbor.