The Impossible Distance

I write things without knowing what I am supposed to do when they are done.  when I finished the first draft of Antiartists, I literally Googled "I finished my novel. What do I do now?" If I feel compelled to write for whatever reason, I always write first and figure out what to do with it after.  Sometimes these strange orphans find a home, sometimes they just wait until they come of age and then go out into the world alone.  This is one of the latter.  I don't remember when or why I wrote it, but I think it is beautiful and thought I would share it since it never got adopted.  It looks like a poem, and it is, but it is also a story.

The Impossible Distance

Off the late shift, walking and staring up at the stars, the impossible distance

Between me and them, them and each other

The impossible distance…

I worked, and I didn't speak to another person

It is the nature of the job, a simple thing soon to be automated

Soon I will be redundant.

At home awaits cold darkness, an indifferent wife

The heat has long left, gone

With the hope, and our belief in each other

A car sits parked, lights off, engine running, an anomaly,

Soft music, a hand resting on the sill,

I fix my eyes ahead; parked cars in the dark are none of my business

Kids smoking something illegal, maybe,

Or with roaming hands and mouths,

Breath on neck, hot flesh and desire

Lust or dreams, fire or peace,

These things are not for me,

These things are for parked cars in the dark.

I try to pass, to think of distance, of darkness

But a voice, soft and gentle

A warm whisper pleads Wait, please

The voice says Mercy, it says

Don't leave me alone.

It whispers, Please

I pause in my walk, I fear a trap, a honeypot

I fear faceless voices in the dark

I fear anomalous parked cars on my walk home

But the voice, male and soft

Needing but not expecting

I should ignore it, just keep walking

Home to my dark and cold house, my indifferent wife

But I don't, I stop, thinking trouble

Fearing danger.

Please, the voice says again

Just a minute, it says

Have mercy

And it is that word,

Mercy

That is why I turn back, why I stop contemplating impossible distances

I turn back; the car is dark inside

I look over my shoulder, see my own house

Dark inside there too

The voice in the dark says I am not dangerous

But of course that is exactly

what someone dangerous would say

Please the voice says again

A moment

Just a moment of your time

And I speak aloud; my voice sounds foreign

I haven't spoken to someone

In so long, so long

Who’s there I croak,

Who is that?

I peer into the dark.

The voice from the darkness, You don't know me

I don't know you either

We are strangers to one another

Strangers.

What my mother told me to never talk to.

But the voice said mercy.

I move forward, thinking no, thinking stupid

But I move anyway,

Wondering, not understanding, why

I hear soft music playing, strings, a soft croon

Unfamiliar rhythms and shifting tempos

Warm and beautiful

Will you join me, the voice again

Overlaid on the music,

It won't be long.  Please.

I thought I wanted to be alone the voice says

But I don’t, I can’t.

And there is only you, a stranger walking past.

You don't have to, says the voice,

I understand if you won’t

I understand this is unusual

I have a story and it will not be long

And I want you to carry it with you

I need someone to remember me.

Just a story the voice says.

Something to remember

That is all I have left.

And still thinking I shouldn't, I do

I walk around

I get in the car just like Mother told me not to

The soft voice is a man,

Pale and thin, lit green by the dash lights

He turns and smiles a sad tired smile

Thank you he says

Thank you

Thank you

Who are you

My unfamiliar voice creaks

What is this

That is me singing there, he says

A hand makes a vague gesture at the stereo

Do you like it?

Before I can speak he continues

I want to tell you a story

And time is short

He looks out the windshield and speaks

A pouring out of words,

A flow, a lazy river of words

My parents were religious, were zealots

Fundamentalists

And I was different than they wanted me to be

They sent me to camps as a kid

To try to fix me

Convert me into something they could stand

And I wanted to be what they wanted me to be

I tried, I prayed, to be fixed

But what was wrong stayed wrong, understand?

I stayed wrong and hated myself

And I began to hate them too

Love and hate at the same time like family does

And then they quit trying,

They quit praying for me, shut me out,

stonewalled, cold shouldered, silent treated

I was a broken unwanted sinner

And what was wrong kept being wrong

And I stopped trying too

And I started sinning for real

Sinning on purpose

Deliberate and willful

And it was a relief to stop pretending

A relief to finally be who I had always been

To be as I was created to be

It was a relief, and I came to realize

That I was not broken

That there was nothing wrong

And I found a life, years after making every mistake

I sang songs and loved

And I felt mostly whole again

I couldn't shake the religion of my childhood

Ingrained, ground in, indelible

When I was desperate I prayed.

If I was made wrong, then God made me wrong

And it could not be a mistake

Because God doesn't make them

And there were moments of sublime beauty

A sunrise, a silhouette against a window

And I thought there is God, right there

And I reached out to my parents

The fundamentalists

The absolutists, the black and whiters

I wanted to forgive them, to be myself forgiven

I wanted

To not be an orphan anymore

We are ashamed they said,

To have a son like you

Ashamed they said

He stops talking, turns to me lit green in the dash lights.

Why did you stop he asks, Why did you come back

And I want to have an answer but I don't

They never spoke to me again

He speaks to the windshield

And I never called them again

I buried it, my parent’s love

And their religion

Pushed it down inside, hid it in the darkness

And I think it grew he says

The hate, the grief, I think it turned into this thing

That has killed me

Words have weight

Some weigh hardly anything

For instance, grace. For instance, light

Some are as heavy as guilt

Metastatic,

Inoperable.

Some fall like stones

Alone.

Terminal.

He shudders, his voice slurs.

Why did you stop he says

Are you an angel?

I am just a man.

I stopped because of a word, wet with tears and blood

Mercy.

I took all these pills, he says and thought I wanted privacy

I thought I wanted to be alone

But nobody ever does in the end.

The words pour from his mouth

Sibilant and wet

They puddle on the floor

In the dark he takes my hand

It trembles, weak

It feels fragile, weightless

My parent’s God, he whispers,

Will judge me harshly

My parent’s God will condemn me

If I ever face God, he whispers

I'm going to ask

Why did this life have to hurt so much?

And on the stereo his song ends

And on this earth

His story ends too.

In the darkness I am alone again

And I whisper a promise:

I will remember you

And there are calls to make

Official things, and questions

That I will have no good answer for

But in the end there is nothing left

But to take his story, carry it with me,

And contemplate the impossible distance.

Still Writing, 

RP

7-31-18

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