Wound Gallery

I’m sad about you too, that night in the subterranean hotel bar, tracing with my eyes the anatomy of the body of God.

I shrank in my chair as he explained how he had to put himself together anew again every single day. As if an Ovidian tale, peril and tragedy and unending curses. Who is my wife and what does she mean to me? I make spreadsheets to organize information to rebuild an understanding of who “I” am, what “I” have done so far — can you imagine the terror in his crinkled almond eyes? Sheer. And my fragility see-through, too, I could tell from the Self view window. Virtual is forgiving, because you can look at yourself for refuge. There’s no cold impersonal common space, blood never reaches its boiling point. If I could have blushed I would but I didn’t need to, he saw it in my eyes and my restless posture, by the end of it he said he didn’t remember ever feeling so seen by someone.

And this is to you, and you, and you. When you told me about the rages of your father and the futility of supportive housing applications, about your constant migraines and the huge dog with separation anxiety — I ached for you. Still I ache, remembering you tell me how it hurts the same no matter how many years its been since you lost your father. Waking with blood in your nose. Waking and falling asleep and not moving at all in the hours between. How you lost your job days after getting it, days after signing a lease for an expensive new home. How your last roommate cut you open and you couldn’t find it in your heart to call the police, only to bleed and be quiet.

“Just listen. I don’t need any advice. There’s nothing anyone can do about me. But I wish someone would just listen to me, just once.”

When the first pillar of sunlight crests over the skyline I think of you, cringing, knowing I might be a few minutes late because I’m probably going to sleep in too much. I know you have the nightmares too. We haven’t mentioned your sleep paralysis in weeks, I know, because you’re afraid and I am too, and I haven’t yet given you anything sharp enough to reduce them.

I don’t have anything to offer except my eyes.

All of my muscles are tense. My hands are always frigid cold. Would-be lovers audition, they massage my shoulders in the club under steep shadow. I savor all the touch. I have to.

“When I was in the hospital, for my last group session, we had to make a vision board with what we’d like our life to look like in the future. I started crying and I couldn’t stop, because I’d spent so long ruminating on the past that I never learned how to imagine the future. I never thought I’d live this long. The facilitator told me that’s OK, I can start small, maybe with just a picture of something I’d like to see when I get out. I thought about how all my plants died before I was admitted because I was too depressed to water or take care of them. So I drew a bunch of colorful flowers. I told them all that I just wanted to see life growing again around me. I just wanted to be alive and see beauty again.”

Someone I’m seeing has forgotten how to dream. I’m sad about you too, that night in the subterranean hotel bar, tracing with my eyes the anatomy of the body of God. To die before death: I had a dream the other night of being pursued and eventually gunned down by assassins. Henchmen for a rapper that my younger brother dissed in a viral track. I remember dropping to my knees with blood running from me like a fountain, staring at my young executioners like a neo-revolutionary firing squad. Angry, robbed of a life, frustrated by fate. Am I already part of the obsolete old era, impotent and unable to reach the rabid youth? You who doesn’t know how to dream once said to me that you feared maybe you had taken a wrong turn onto the wrong path and there was no way to correct it. All I could think to say was that the right one is whichever path you’d decided to take. Even if it leads you off a cliff.

And then to the you that doesn’t know love. The patient, the friend, the reader, the critic. I’m sorry I can’t relate to you. I am telling the truth now so I will say here that I am afraid of you, I know even less than usual what to say to you. I never have a plan but at least I have my breath, usually. Not so, with you. All I can do is watch and listen. And often that is enough, often you mention you’ve enjoyed our talk without expecting to, even though I had little to add. I am struck when we talk very often by the burning bush revelation: that changing the world necessitates changing the individual, and just by being heard you are going through a change. Just through writing this out to you, you who won’t even read it, I am changing too. Compared to most you’re colorblind, you told me, ¿remember?, you said over sniffles that love is like a color you can recognize but can’t quite see. It’s cold to you.

I’m wearing my fur coat in the house. Vodka soda again. Again, I wonder about sonder. Again, I’m out, surrounded by women with thick forearms hooked around their necks. Bubbles erupt, mist weeps. ¿Where have you been? you ask, to which I have no answer. Except for the truth I can only say here: I’ve been stuffing my face into the pillow; I’ve been plagued by mysterious dreams which I do not remember when I wake drenched in sweat; I’ve been dancing in opium delirium again, trying to forget you.

Walnut wood on the floor, tomoe spinning in the spotlight. Enjoying the validation of being well put together as well as appreciated within you. There has never been a connection like ours. Even if we just met — we stick.

I’m sad for us who seek sadness. It’s comfortable, I know, it’s harmonious when the outside world matches the in.

It’s futile. I can’t forget about you no matter how hard I try. I still can see you curled up on the floor, smoke cuffed around your wrists, tears pooling in the bags under your eyes; how hopeless, how despondent. Red eyes, heaving chest. I couldn’t do anything but listen and try to get through your armor. But you wouldn’t let me in. You couldn’t. If I was right and you were wrong, and you really were deserving of love and peace, then how does one reconcile all the horrible treatment you’ve endured thus far? Everything crumbles when we realize: those who say they’ve loved us have never once treated us well. If this isn’t what you deserve, then, ¿is God evil?

You used to want to put yourself to rest. Your birthday passed again the other day. “No One Noticed” is playing at a low hum in the background, María is whispering in my ear. It sounds like your voice, if I move far enough away from it. And when we parted for the last time, ¿remember?, I was brought to tears hearing you say: “I’m so excited for all my tomorrows.”