I will not go all sweet and humble,
with injured heart and words of woe.
I will blister. I will fester.
I will spark. I will explode.
I will slice you with the pieces;
what is left of what once was
will still do damage in my absence:
fitting epitaph of love.
It was no surprise that she spotted him first. Being closer to the ground and still experiencing life with the wonderment of a 7 year old, she could not have possibly passed him by.
“Momma, look.” She tugged at my hand and pointed.
There by a puddle along the trail was a small colorful turtle. She edged closer and squatted down to look, her stringy hair falling into her face.
“Why Big John, “she addressed him, “what are you doing here all alone?”
“Big John?” I asked.
She rocked back on her heels and looked up at me. “Yeah, this is Big John and he shouldn’t be here all by himself.”
“He shouldn’t?”
She stood up, brushing the dirt from her hands on her shorts. She prodded at the turtle with the toe of her sneaker. He didn’t move, or maybe he did, just real slow.
“We have to take him with us.” She declared matter-of-fact. “We can’t leave him here.”
“But honey, he belongs here. He lives here in the woods. What will we do with him?” I don’t know why I was trying to reason with her.
She planted her fists on her hips and squinted up at me. “Let’s take him home. He needs me.”
I can still see that little dirty face, so serious. There was not much we agreed on then. She was asserting her independence, leaving me behind a little more day by day while I grasped at her childhood. Everyone said they grow up so fast, but this one was born grown. It wasn’t fair. Just about the time I figured out what to do for her, she needed it less and less.
As for this turtle, yuck. I mean yuckity yuck yuck. It was smelly and germy and in my head I wanted no part of Big John. Luckily my heart took over. In this one moment my Mommy heartache and confusion were resolved. If you can’t make her stay little, you better love turtles, or grandaddy long legs, or horses, or anything she loves at the moment.
“Do you want to carry him?” I asked her.
She shook her head at me without a second thought. She had managed to squat down, crawl around and look at him from every angle. She nudged him with a stick and yelled at him. She jumped up and down and rattled the change in her pocket. She provoked that poor turtle in every way she could scientifically. But she wasn’t touching him. Nope no way.
I sighed and picked up a nearby stick. Slowly I turned Big John over on his back. He withdrew to his privacy like a good turtle. She watched me as I picked him up. I was sure she was looking for signs of what was going on in my head, so I bluffed. I cradled that turtle in my tee shirt like I was a professional turtle toter.
My mind raced. Ew. He is gross. I can NOT believe I am doing this. What in the world will we do with a turtle when we get home? Meanwhile I kept poor Big John on his back to encourage him to stay private. Knowing nothing of real value about turtles I figured it might just be my luck that he was a snapper.
Once we made it home, I found a small box for Big John. We put him on the porch under the wind chimes. After a few minutes he got used to his new home and came out of his shell. He poked around, looking for a way out I suspected. We supplied him with lettuce and grass and some old rags to soften the box. She was faithful, checking on him hour after hour, reporting he ate a little, he moved around and so on.
After two days we woke up to find Big John gone. I don’t know how he got out of that box but he did. She was not upset to find him gone. Her attention had moved on to something different. Maybe he sensed that and decided to move along himself.
He came back to visit us a handful of times. Just out of the blue he would show up under those wind chimes on the porch. We never tried to box him in again, we just enjoyed his visits.
When I see a turtle sometimes I think of Big John. I remember most a small dirty face beaming at me as we walked home with him. I remember she said, “See Momma, I knew we could save him.” And I remember that just for a day or two I was a great turtle toting Mom.
Thanks Big John, wherever you are.
It is the kind of tired that doesn’t sleep.
It is the kind of hungry that doesn’t eat.
It is the kind of breathing that leaves you breathless.
It is the kind of numb that slices through the skin.
It is a deafening roar in the quiet.
It is overwhelming sadness.
They come slowly, like the sound of a helicopter in the distance, easy to ignore.
Then they come in waves, until the helicopter is on the ground in front of you, assaulting you with the wind from its blades.
There you crouch and cover and try to protect yourself. There you are powerless, too in awe to move away.
There they get to you. The things they say, they stick.
It has always been. It will always be.
Damaged goods, the truth always tells.
Put up your fronts, be even happy for a minute or two in this desperate life.
We all know the actuality.
We all know the eventuality.
Every time, just for a second, you forget, we’ll be right here, like helicopters in the distance.
You can’t tell, you can’t explain. They laugh like we said they would.
It’s so simple, take a pill to forget, get more sleep.
Just cheer up already before you become completely unbearable.
It’s your responsibility to be liked, the clown at the show.
You have to work and earn their attention; you have to fight to be seen as worthy.
And one day when you finally get tired of fighting, we’ll be right here, like we always have been.
He said, “Goodbye, I must be going.”.
She said, “Stay.”.
He said, “There’s danger in their knowing.”.
She said, “Stay.”.
He said, “You must not demand it.”.
He said, “They will not understand it.”.
She said, “Then go, and don’t come back again.”.
He said, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”.
She said, “So then why won’t you… stay?”.
He said, “Goodbye, I really must be going.”.
He said, “Can you please forgive me?”
She said, “No.”.
He said, “Won’t you please be with me?”.
She said, “No.”.
He said, “Won’t you even think about,”.
He said, “the fact that I can’t live without…”.
She said, “No, it’s just too late for that.”.
He said, “I wish that things were not this way”.
She said, “Maybe you should have stayed.”.
He said, “Please, please can you forgive me?”.
He said, “It’s been such a long time.”.
She said, “Years.”.
He said, “It seems like another lifetime.”.
She said, “Years.”.
He said, “Do you know I loved you?”.
He said, “Do you know I’ve missed you?”.
She said, “Yes, and I you, just the same.”.
He said, “It’s sad that it turned out this way.”.
She said, “All I asked was that you…stay.”.
He said, “Goodbye, I really must be going.”.
The madness is coming and I cannot stop it
Even if I was so inclined
The darkness will slowly drift in like a fog
Taking over my heart and my mind
The voices are chanting quiet yet louder
And louder as time ticks away
If someone could hear the scream in my whisper
It might not have to turn out this way
The sadness, it calls to me
like some new personality
Made familiar in my own skin
There is nothing to fear,
but fear itself it would seem
And of course the Devil within
I cannot resist
it takes too much effort
To stay in the here and the now
When I much prefer
the pain of my making
It almost seems welcome somehow
So come madness come
I will not run
Though you frighten me to the core
I’ll take your hand
And I’ll let you lead me
To hell like the times before.
Were Not For You
Were not for you,
my words would not come,
spilling to the page like happy children
anxious to see what the world holds for them.
Were not for you,
my thoughts would cloud
and thicken, clumped together,
incoherent and ignored.
Were not for you,
my song would forever go unsung
except in the empty sadness
of my mind.
Yet for you
they do come
as easily and natural as if they had a right to be
all along.
And so you
can take the credit or the blame, your choice.
But were it not for you,
my soul would have no voice.
