a letter about love.

I left my church days and hopelessly droll prayers in a box I brought home from work. I left it on the corner of 40th and Adams. Next to the freeway and the park, on the sidewalk out in front of the house where I lived in what felt like a normal life.

My heart followed at my feet and decided to stay so I promised I would be back when the breaking was fixed. I remember thinking, one day I wouldn’t need to buy the bruised fruit anymore just because it was on sale. I would be back if I could just learn to stop and walk around, instead of through, the destruction I stumbled upon my entire life.

I would be right here though, always.

I ran far enough where the skeleton of my memories rarely visit me and when they do it’s only because I let them in order to dismember, dissect and then sew them back together. I don’t let the sutures dehisce; there are no more flowers, or mysteries or fairytales hidden in my flesh.

One day, I happened to I find you on a corner wearing newly shined shoes and an Eddie Haskell smile. You were drunk and wishing I was the kind of girl who needed something from you. I listened as you made opulent promises and even though I didn’t believe you I let you feed me tangerine slices while we sobered up.

You never stop long enough to be examined. You never stand far enough so that I can see you clearly. You take the air and fill it with perfume. You push and you cower. I am full, taken over, overwhelmed but most importantly I am alive.

The two of us, we couldn’t be more different. I pretend not to notice but I watch you impress the world with your colored wings and your small hollow bones that allow you to fly. My kind bird. I love you and because I love you I worry and the worry makes me rail against the softness that has allowed me to so carelessly care for someone so carefree.

Sometimes it seems as though it is only when your violent knuckles are punching against the leather steering wheel or your angry words are littered into my hair that you are distant enough to understand. I see unmistakably then. You are crying and I sit there sighing and silent and smoking cigarettes. You could never be as cruel as I am the obvious stoic.

I hold on as if letting go would mean you are not good enough or gentle enough or passionate enough. As if our separate history could not keep us apart. I hold on for my place to belong. For the small shelter I am able to provide. A place that is ours for now in a life that takes at any minute.

I am not a girl who questions if I have loved too long, too hard, too much or too little. I do not apologize or offer forgiveness. I do not scream and throw fits or placate and appease you.

I love like a cripple who has survived past the fall. I love like a starving man who has had the last of his bread stolen. I love like a vagabond jumping another train without knowing where its headed.

My kind bird,
you love me back.

You love me back as if this is good enough.

1937

Rose, my lost bird
my wayward girl

all the demons that possessed you
couldn’t keep you here

with the laughter of angels
in the calm of a fight
you were gone to me forever the longest summer night
the air, with fire flies and a southern drawl, can charm or can kill
should it speed or should it stall
years ago, yet I still can’t forget
my sister, my friend, my life in regret.

You'll never hear me say "thank you" with a whisper.

Sometimes we all have those days. It is usually an in between day where a muggy gray sky finally turns to rain. My friend who was a stranger sat down with me held my hand. I didn’t have to explain I am not the easiest person to reach or please forget it I’ll be fine. I was nearly defenseless so I let her sit with me. She sat there with her perfectly made up Latin eyes blanketed by thick long hair. She was beautiful in the way that only she in that moment could ever be.

It was just one of those days but I knew she had ached where I had ached.

She didn’t know about the time I ran away when I was nine because it was too much or the day I found my fathers dead body. She didn’t know that when I was 6 I wanted to be a country singer or about the joke I tell too often, “I would sing but I would hate to alienate you as I have a voice of angels” because I can’t sing. She only knew me though passing moments here and there, social interactions but she understood me. She had no reason to befriend me but did it anyway, against the popular vote.

When she sat with me I felt the burden of having to carry myself home lifted. I found a friend who without knowing reminded me to look around open up and give, sometimes the kindness of a friend is all we need to get us through a bad moment.

the world where we hide our loneliness

there are three models that lived upstairs from Mrs. Kuban. She was always yelling about them

around the top of her head in their high heels.
they are good looking but looking
really hungry.

Downstairs, Mrs. Kuban,
an operating-room nurse,
suffered a gash in her head that required stitches and had two broken bones in her foot.

Still for all for Mr. Kuban did he couldn’t find her heart. He lost it years ago.

The day Mrs. Kuban came home from the hospital I watched through the little
hole in my front door
the three girls, the models laughed but later
one went back when she thought no one was looking and brought Ms. Kuban fruit

I was looking.

One day.

When I woke you were sipping on a straw from my spine, drunk and dreaming. In that time I forgot how to sleep so I stayed up and watched your rib cage, hold your lungs, your lungs boast and then cower. I watched you for hours until I couldn’t take it much longer I woke you, I woke you and asked if you knew,
“how many bones are in our bodies”
and then I said
“well, but what I meant was, …I love you.”
(Ignore the questions about the bones; I only wanted to tell you the second part)

That day you assembled me with Rumi and yet, you- not the lover- nor the sage had ever heard of him. That day, I felt a tapping from the inside of my flesh. A Jameson heart covered up with pineapple. You took a straw and drank from my spine. “206 bones” you said were in my body. I pushed my jaw into your collar bone, 412 bones I thought. Now, here, with you I hadn’t expected it.

A deer that had escaped a hunter, caught in the morning that day we first slept in.This is only one small way we are different. You released an irritable sigh. I thought of trains and oceans. I thought I could do something but did nothing besides think. And then I thought about the weekend and how it was mostly beautiful . As you, are- mostly, beautiful. Even when you can’t help but try to unbutton my polished nerves . With your furrowed brow and the dramatics of the season actor. You know, when cornered like this I think we’re competing for sanity and I refuse to loose. When I say these things your only response is to ask if today is the day I am going to take my red shoes and used books home from your house. If today was the day I was leaving you.I always respond with “No” I say, “you’ve assembled me with Rumi and you’ve never even read him”

the lights are pretty.

I was raised on ritual. Each breathe, it seemed a prayer. I still believe in intrinsic human goodness but I think my faith, faith in things uncertain, faith for things bigger than face value in part (a big part) caused my downfall. I always thought, “things have to get better now” until they didn’t and I just needed to step out of that pseudo sanctuary. These days I am so far removed that I smirk thinking about how I barely made it out of that, again. Now, I hold my cards close to my chest not because I live defensively but because most of my honest emotion, my true emotion has been spent and I am only trying to keep what’s left safe. I have changed very much over who I once was- a mental paradigm shift. This time of year I see now how I stand out (or at least feel the goofy paranoia).No, I don’t stand out physically. I am pretty average and as my father would say “count your blessings that you’re average). In a long sleeve shirt I could fit in just about anywhere. Most of the time, I’m impermeable, clear, calm. Logic is uncomplicated and easy for me to follow. I may not be a great leader but I am for certain, a decent follower. But this time a year my speech, my thoughts, my actions are clumsy at best. Underneath the shirt, the skin, the bones I nervously wait for the holidays to fall into the quieter days, the ho-hum months. It like the holidays, the traditions, the rituals have the power to hold me up in a light that I am not comfortable in only to examine me for long enough to tell me Hallmark did not send one addressed to me. Oh woe, oh woe…pity makes me ugly and I hate to ruin perfectly good day so I make it look like I am busy, not just standing around waiting for some great celebration.

I make blueprints of my thoughts and plan for a future similar to my past and search frantically for simplicity.

Maybe one day I will laugh and remember what it is in Turkey that makes you sleepy and bring it up after a holiday dinner.

The passing of Prop 8. Look its a Golden Calf!

Years ago I had a friend who had left their beautiful desert town, parting at the same time with a deeply knit Mormon community. I had no idea the extent of aspiration many members of the Mormon Church were willing to commit to. That was until I was visiting my aforesaid friend one day and they happened to have a random knock at the door. The people, two men, on the other side of the door were apparently friendly people who chatted for a bit and seem to know my friend, even as my friend had no idea who these two men were. They had also known my friend had left the Mormon Church and had come to convince them to come back. We were shocked to say the least. They had been found! Or more importantly why as an adult, who made a decision to go, were they being searched for? It was to me, scary and manipulative.

As an outsider, who hadn't known much about Mormons I was fascinated, so I started reading about the Mormons. I read about Brigham Young (who coincidently shares my birthday) and how he was the leader of the American Latter Day Saint movement. How he was a polygamist and is credited for revoking the priesthood and temple ordinances from black members of the church. He also believed the Adam and God theory. Mind you this is now often scoffed at by modern Mormons.

Oh how hindsight is 20/20.

I began thinking about my own forgotten religion that was still so deeply ingrained in me. How as I child I attended mass at my Catholic school every day, said novenas with my mother on Sundays and at 13 yrs old marched 10 miles in a “Right to Life” campaign, holding a sign up with an aborted fetus. At the time I hadn’t fully understood what taking a woman’s rights away meant. I do however clearly remember as my loving clergy cheered, chanted, hugged and encouraged me that some of the things they were saying sounded both very naïve and malicious.
Through the years I grew away from my church and went though a time I believed in nothing, or thought I did. Until one day I realized I still collected rosary beads, continued to say little prayers and missed the beautiful ritual of the Catholic Church. I am no longer a faithful Catholic but I do still find comfort in the thought. My father was a member of the Knights of Columbus, they stood at his funeral, as this man with such gentle faith, who was not only tolerant but accepting, was laid to rest. It is the last memory I have of the Knights of Columbus in my life until I read of their contribution. I was both torn and saddened to see the contribution made by the Knights of Columbus supporting Prop 8 but unfortunately I wasn't surprised.

The big donations that came in for Prop. 8 are frustrating to say the least. I can't help but wonder and remember the money basket passed around during mass years ago in my past. Are outcomes such as this where the money went?

I want to refute the religious argument on this issue with everything in me but the church is both powerful and loving at minimum to its members and I am no great advocate I usually have an apathetic small voice. I also know first hand how being a proper disciple is implemented in our brains through years and years and how even gentleness and hope cannot sway opinion and anger and insults for the most part only maximize the stronghold. I have not practiced religon in many, many years but I try to remain understanding of it.

I cannot understand however, how someone can logically believe Prop 8 is right. How some people who supported it think it will affect them if it did not pass? How it was preached with fear and lies and that there is still the mentality of such an ignorance so much so that blind, uninformed decisions that truly effect the rights of others are being made into law.

Here is just a random scenario. A straight couple at eighteen, who have known each other for 3 months can drive to Vegas, get hitched for 2 weeks by paying $50 bucks for a marriage license.

A gay couple 37 and 34 who have known each other for 7 years been in love for 5, built a stable home, attend their Unitarian church every Sunday and are active members in their community must pay approximately $2K in lawyers fee to obtain Power of Attorney.

Both the following couples had a civil ceremony but clearly the later couple paid the cost of being discriminated against. Let’s not forget it was only in 1977 the legislature amended Civil Code section 4100 providing a gender-specific description of marriage.

Oh the argument of marriage being a man and a woman. This is based on a religious belief and there are many religions that make up the state of California. How can you ask that your religious beliefs be respected while disrespecting others? This is why there is a separation between church and state.

Of some of the proponents of prop 8, I admire and respect their tenacity. I hope that this comes from an honest place in what feels right in their hearts. What worries me is that, in my opinion, it is a form of eidololatria and big money mixed with big Church mixed with false prophets equals the Great Golden Calf. For some of others for the people unwilling to at least try to understand, for the fanatics, the bullies, the threats, I can only hope that you or your future generations can recognize that gay marriage will not ruin your family, hurt your personal beliefs or infect the country.

I am disheartened thinking about this loss of rights. I am angry as I do not understand how as Californians we were given the opportunity to vote against the denial of civil rights and over half of California voted to do just that deny civil rights. I wonder if we were to turn back time. If we were in a different era with a different mindset where we could stand in voting for Women's rights, for integration in schools?

I am regretful that I didn't do more that many of us did not do more. Yes we can push this is 2010 but it was so close and the costs and the effort spent really only needed that much more. I am mostly ashamed I didn't have more conversations with people I thought would vote yes. I am not argumentative, it wouldn't have been difficult for me to just share and listen instead I didn't want to offend anothers beliefs so I remained quiet. The Sunday a week before the elections I volunteered the No on 8 phone bank but I went to a show instead thinking for certain it wouldn't pass. Thinking, Californians are smarter than to eliminate rights.

I am impressed by the diligence of the same faces I would see at the BART everyday encouraging and reminding me to vote NO. I am moved by friends and family and strangers who allowed themselves an open mind even if they didn't fully understand homosexual lifestyles. I am grateful that half of California stood up against injustice and voted against Prop 8 and that we are headed in a more equal direction.

It came down to a matter of money. If religions want to send money to California to save families, respectfully I’d like to ask to use their big big money to truly save families in this state. The hungry families, the homeless, the poor, the displaced families, the refugees and leave the laws a government issue not a religious one.

In retrospect I know there is more I could have done. I cannot change that now but seeing how this has effected me I know that I have to do my part in this fight. In 30 years I do not think this will be an issue in California but that doesn’t mean it will happen simply because we have waited for it. If we sit and wait there is the possibility we will never see these civil rights implemented, at least during our lifetime. It will take the effort of everyone who thinks this is wrong.