Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
I got lost somewhere between my mattress and the ceiling, the constellations of sharp plaster stars changing shape as my eyes refused to grow heavy. I admire people who can examine life and find a purpose in it.
The seasons cannot change for a person as they fade in and out of your life. And yet summer became autumn. And the tide rose and fell today exactly as I expected it would. What can be said of this? Apologies cannot put green back into the leaves that are collecting in glorious piles at your feet and however flimsy the hands of a clock may seem, they cannot go in any way but their own. Words are useless. Still, though, I have the certain knowledge that there are four seasons, and twelve months, and that you will come and go, never leaving entirely.
No one ever asked me to explain. And somewhere much deeper than I was aware of, where things began to take shape and actually matter, I was thankful for this. I could have said everything and nothing and either one would have meant as much. I was always growing quieter, internally and externally. And how do you start to explain something no one cared about for seventeen years?
Today, I wanted to break into a sorry that would flood the classroom and the school and the entire earth. You looked at me, and I looked at you, and I have never felt an apology push against my ribs so strongly. I’m sorry that we aren’t friends. I really am. I’m sorry I got so scared. I’m sorry I can’t laugh. I just…I had to do something to protect myself from this shame, and perhaps that in itself is both selfish and wrong, and perhaps you can’t begin to understand my shame, but that is where things have gone and why. I’m so sorry, and maybe one day I’ll have the strength to really tell you. I feel like I’m more sorry than you’ll ever be, and you did hurt me, but I let you hurt me, so I cannot put the blame on your shoulders.
I’m almost certain that I have read in some book, or quote, or something of that nature, that you’re supposed to feel something when you kiss a person. I didn’t feel a damn thing, and I feel shame welling up in my heart for this reason.
It’s not that my life seems like a waste. It’s just that sometimes, when I am very sad, which is quite often, I can’t understand why anyone is alive, especially me, especially this family, and why should we have to be alive to feel all of this hurt, a hurt we can’t avoid because it comes from loving one another? Why should we have to watch each other change? Why should we stay up for nights at a time, forcing ourselves to imagine how one of us might exist without the other three? Why are we drifting apart, and why are we scared to admit it, and why don’t we try to do something about it instead of crying in the back seat of the car and sleeping on the floor because it makes you sleep to have another person in the room? I’ll never leave. I’ll never leave this house, the cells of your skin, the floors, I’ll never leave because how could I? How?
I have this odd habit of never thanking myself for anything.
I also think that by the time I am older, and by older I mean 60 or 70, the only thing I will be able to say is ‘I am sorry’ and it will be a terrible thing.
You tell yourself not to remember, and then that’s all you’re able to do. You remember everything: the fact that the room you just passed through had two televisions, a person’s phone number, the 22nd president of the United States. It never seems to quit. And at the same time you are drowning in shame.
I think that the act of remembering is more pleasant to me than what I am actually remembering.
That was it. I was sitting on the porch, holding my head in my hands and not knowing which way the wind would blow next, only wishing that it wouldn’t blow at all. I’m tired of movies with terrible endings, and I’m tired of things being scattered.
Kimberly, I love you.
Diana, I love you.
Jessica, I love you.
Jordan, I love you.
Kimmy, I love you.
I just wish that I could be better at loving all of you, because you are so helpful to me in ways you will never know, or ways that just don’t make sense to anyone but me.
I smiled so much today that my face started to hurt.
