THE WIND PHONE

I Dreamed You Died, So Waking Up, I Wrote Your Eulogy.

Troubadour

The only time I’m vulnerable is in the early hours. Come moon-tide, all the things I’ve banished from waking slither out and nuzzle up to me. Last night, I dreamed you’d died. Like swimming out past the safe line. Like gulping at waves, thinking you might swallow up a whole ocean. Like betting against the house, downing another №7, and thinking you really got a shot this time.

House wins, baby. House always wins.

Except for our house. Paper house, town mouse. Concrete dreamed inside a lullaby whispered from your lips to my ears. Your lips. Chapped lips. Cracked and calloused like you been singing for your supper these fifty-odd years, and it’s getting old. You’re getting old.

And yet, you look at me like I’m the first to ever listen to you. Me. With my bell-bottom ears and my casserole, dough-kneading fingers.

Maybe I’m to blame. It was me got up in the AM to make you pancakes on that old pass-me-down oven I was scared to start up. Case everything blew up in my face. Tee-ha. I can be real illiterate for a so-called writer.

It was me who potted our first houseplant. Me who inhaled all the pent-up dust wafting out of your hard drive. It was me who danced castles of sand, and Benedict eggs around your wandering heart. Sang me a song, and I trapped your voice inside my seashell heart.

That’s the folly of men. We’ve downplayed sirens into mermaids who flounder about and fall for princes in faraway lands. Tried to drag them to shore, replace their fantasies with our own, except the waves don’t work like that.

Sirens are the things that strike up lonely hearts in the nighttime. Who’s dead? Who’s dying? Is it my house burning to the ground, and me, entombed inside with all my hopes and undelivered longing? Not yet, oh lord. Not just.

Siren drum, except there’s no sirens to sing for you. Your suicide is a quiet, faraway affair. As befit princes of solemn, faraway lands. The worst thing about suicides is that they don’t come with a list. You got on your oxygen mask in time. Well done. Now here’s ten things for you to do, tide you over until we crash-land.

There’s no list pinned to the funerary notice. No addendum to the knot inside my throat, so I scream.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

You stare back in pitch-silence. Ever polite in your rebuttal. Remind me it’s not enough. Too late. Damage done, and regardless how many times I marshal my lips into the proper shape, it’s still not proper words that come, but jumble ones. Monkey-bar nonsense to pin to your lapel and sing yourself to sleep, except you’re wide awake in your wash-away palace I can’t swim to.

Twice now, I’ve tried to walk into the sea and not walk back. But in the end, I’m always careening backwards.

The first time, I remembered I’d forgotten my glasses. And I figured, what would you tease me about, push back over the bridge of my camel-hump nose, if I forgot my glasses?

The second time around, I was better prepared. I wrapped my glasses with their pink-gold rim (the sky at sundown over Brighton Pier), inside a zip-lock, watertight, water-out bag. Tied it around my neck like the key back to our house, and began swimming in circles. Whistling through my teeth the first song you ever serenaded me.

But then, I stopped. ’Cause you’d been dead a while, and I figured you’d be expecting a new song. That you might enjoy the sound this world makes, even without you in it. Reluctant, I swam back ashore and began my sojourn. I thought I’d visit each town, each barroom stool, each pier, each nightie you’d stumbled across in your half-a-century life. Collect a syllable from each, then with my song finally done, I’d swim out a third time with my song of the future to bring back to the past for you.

Thought maybe then you could see all the treasure you meant. To the world. To the trees. Not just to me.

It’s not been easy. In your quiver, unsure heart, you loved a-very-lot. I’ve been meticulous in my culling of needless memories and old passwords. Over my travels, I’ve forgot the taste of cinnamon rolls, and Byron’s poems. French, I had surgically removed to fit inside my brain a map of your favorite pubs. My first communion, I sacrificed in asking all your lovelorn friends what they’d like to send back.

I haven’t much left to lose, but the good news is I’m nearly there. My song, grown now to double LP size, is almost over. My lips have grown cracked and calloused. My fingers smoked down to stubs.

Any day now, I’ll lay it down at your middle-of-the-ocean sepulcher and pray it suffices, since all my love-yous couldn’t be enough.

Thank you for reading.

I write stuff. Fiction. Psychology. Movie Reviews. Some poetry. The third (and final) volume in my fantasy series, The Warhound Trilogy, is out now. Check out the entire series for only ten bucks.