Sandpaper

Shards of broken glass scatter on all sides as I hit the ground rolling, then running, hating and loving all at the same time and wondering where all the wine that used to refill itself in the empty glass went, because it's not here anymore, unless you count the purplish stain on the tablecloth in a suspiciously convenient location.  But that never did any good but to the dogs, and I'm not about to wring out cotton over my glass, so all I can do now is pick apart the words spoken by someone who never meant them and try to find a deeper significance to explain to the students and teachers, hoping and praying that the world will see some genius that has been missed by all others since the first time the window broke.

Breakout

Careening off the interstate seems to be a theme for the battered blue Toyota that never dies, though it slashes through guardrails and rolls through ditches.  I am in invincible, bulletproof, on the verge of being able to fly and leave this stupid car in the dust behind me, never again worrying about the money that spews forth from the exhaust pipes or the blood that pools on the ground behind, too much for survival but too little to account for everything, so you know there's a broken body still hidden in a shallow grave somewhere along the road.  I can still be brought down by the right shot and the woman in the lab coat knows how to take it, and for all my abilities I can't break through the cold steel of handcuffs or the harsh iron of prison bars or even the one disparaging glance of the man in tan, all conspiring to hold me in and keep me from doing a shred of good.

Sacrifice

What must I have felt?  A strange question, I'm sure, but I promise you I'm looking at videos that show me in a place of which I remember nothing.  There's the man in the perfectly pressed business suit, standing with his hands upraised as if in prayer, receiving some guidance or strength from above, or perhaps simply in reverence for himself and his sacrifice.  Hollow thumps of polished shoes echo against the shiny wood floor as his enemies bear down on him, their knives and guns at the ready, but he offers no protest as they take him away to be burned.

Switchblade

The cool touch of the night twists through the narrow gap of the window, ducking under the curtains like a creeping tendril searching for a tidbit to bring back to its owner.  I see it, of course, sitting still as could be on the bed, staring out at whatever it is I can't see but feeling it calling to me and not knowing whether I'm on the verge of seeking a new and important truth or just about to become somebody's next lunch.  The friend beside me smiles up, knowing no more than me but entirely unworried for my safety or his, because as far as he's concerned I can do no wrong, and I realize that underneath his furry features is hidden the very essence of friendship, and I finally understand what it is that keeps me on course on such a tumultuous river.  The steady hand on the paddle and the constant vigilance of the crow at the stern guarantee that I will not stray no matter how much I do, for the divisions and the flood-plains and the inlets all re-converge, carrying an uncertain me to the magical pond with that perfect log for sitting and watching owls.  And right there, right here, right now, in this exact moment I realize that the majesty of such a creature is far beyond my humble sins, but that I will spend my lifetime drowning any who have the arrogant audacity to so much as look where their eyes don't deserve to look.  I will be the guardian of my fellow sinners, and together we will cross streams with our eyes downcast, as much to hide them from the sun as to watch our footing.

Foundations

Tinnish noises fall from the speakers that desperately need replacing over the scuffed brown floor of the roller rink, reflecting, *I* think, the hollow noises that still spring forth through voice and pen like harsh laughter at a statement that, you realize a second too late, was never meant to be a joke. Once upon a time there was a place to ice skate on the island in the middle of the dirty brown Elkhart river, but time or tiredness or financial trouble or who knows what wore it down to its very foundations, and now all one can find there is dirt and plants and mosquitos whining incessantly past our bare ears. You have to wonder, really, whether the emotion invoked by those worn-out and abandoned places where teenagers used to hold hands is one of listless romanticism or pure, wistful depression. There is the sadness at such a dreary image, but there is the joy at feeling such sadness. And you - yes, silly girl, you - you know what I'm talking about. I see you standing there staring at the overgrown foundations with a sparkle of what you want to be a tear waiting in the corner of your eye for you to muster enough feeling to force it out, because we all know crying is a hell of a lot better than the tormented in-betweenness I see you living, always drifting between the shores but never quite settling on either one.

the dancer

The slow silk waterfall caresses her skin, dancing down her arm and weaving its way around her wrist, a ribbon of meaning from a stream of thought that usually flows too subtly for there to be much commotion about it.  She smiles the sad smile that makes me long to be seen, for there is not enough in me to offer all the love she draws out of me.  She tosses the white scarf more securely over her shoulder - somehow it remains dry in the midst of the water - and dances gracefully to the riverbank, and with a playful wink and a child's laughter she is lost in the trees.  Yet when I listen, I can hear her song, soft and pure as no other could ever sing, and I feel certain that home cannot be far away.

A Letter to a Death Row Inmate

Dear Kevin,

I hope this letter finds you well. I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to get back to you - I have been crazy busy for the last several weeks. I was in a play - Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" - which was pretty much my life. It's over now, though, which gives me some much needed free time.

First, I'll give you some updates from my life. As you know, I spent my January session in Mexico. I was taking Spanish classes down there and just generally enjoying the sun and beach - we have neither in Indiana in January. I also got to visit some Mayan ruins, which were really interesting, and of course the food was amazing. Unfortunately, I also caught a Malaria-like disease called Dengue Fever, which had me out of action for a week. I thought it funny that I got Dengue in Mexico, since when I was in Costa Rica last January there was a big scare about it but I was fine there. Dengue is mosquito-borne, and I guess if you get it a second time there's a 30% chance it will kill you.

The trip helped me decide something, though. I'm going to study in Mexico starting this September, for at least a semester and possibly a year. I'm not sure how we'll stay in touch, but I'll figure something out.

In other news, I got an internship in Elgin, IL for the summer. It starts in early June, and as soon as I find out where I'm staying I'll get you the address. Sorry I keep jumping around... eventually I'll settle down. Anyway, I'll be working for The Messenger, the Church of the Brethren news magazine.

So how are you? What's been going on lately? What's it like there? Obviously you don't have to answer these questions if you don't want to, but I am interested in you as a person and I do care about you. I also know you don't talk very much about yourself, though, so you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to.

You asked quite some time ago what I would do to change the world if I could, and to not answer with "world peace." Fair enough. I think before we can have world peace, we need world justice. I think world peace is prevented by corruption of leadership, power differentials, poverty gaps, oppression... a lack of justice. I don't know. Justice might be a word you would consider overused or abused... I certainly think the Justice System could use a lot more justice. To me, the primary element of justice is the recognition of the infinite worth of every individual, and I don't think the courts have that. Then again, all I'm going on is Law & Order reruns, a high school law class and whatever I pick up with my peace studies major. You're probably much more an expert than I am.

My dad once told me "if you want peace, work for justice." I'm not sure exactly what he meant... he's a mayor and sometimes hints that he'd like me to become a cop (ha!), so he may not have been referring to the social justice and equality focus that is much more my thing. At any rate, I didn't like the saying at the time because I'd recently heard a lot of "justice" talk being used to talk up invading Iraq. It was only later that I came to understasnsd the importance of a different kind of justice.

As long as the poor wait at the gates while the rich feast on ten times their share, there will be no peace. As long as we would rather hit back than understand why someone hit us in the first place, as long as our leaders govern and we merely follow, as long as our simple greed and fear are causing the unnecessary deaths of thousands every day, we cannot possibly think to have peace.

As for what I can do... well, I can't change the world. I am one young man with big dreams, disappointingly little motivation, a lack of patience and a quick temper to boot. But I can do my part, and hope that thousands of other dreamy, angry young men do theirs until something gives way.

What's my part? Community peace. Community justice. All I can do is apply my grand vision for the world to how I treat those around me, to how I live my life in the here and now. One kind word can make a big difference. Gandhi said, "be the change you wish to see in the world." This is a step up from the Golden Rule. Treating others as you'd like to be treated is one thing, but to act as you wish ALL others to act is a higher standard, for we always hold our society to a higher standard than we do ourselves.

I hope that you are doing well, and I look forward to hearing from you again.

Your friend,

Nicolas

Snow Angels

Four snow angels, all side-by-side in the crisp white on the back yard. I'm not quite sure how they got there... one I made in a dream, I know that much. And then one looks as if it was made with hope. As if I hoped I was going to make a snow angel, but knew from the start it wasn't going to come out right... see where the robe isn't quite formed, and the wings don't quite stretch high enough. One I don't remember making at all, so I don't even know if it counts. And one I'm lying in, right now, moving my arms up and down and staring at the sky.

It's funny, you know, lying here in the snow where the world makes sense. I know as soon as I get up my perspective will change and everything will be all upside-down, just like before, and just like forever more. I imagine what would happen if I wrote this story down, and I laugh out loud. People will read it, I say to myself, and they'll wonder what it means.

Well, it doesn't mean anything. Not from where you're standing. You have to lie here in the snow with me. There's another snow angel planned; I've left space. We'll lie here together and stare at the sky, and then - maybe then you'll see.

Melancholy

Blotted ink is scattered across the crumpled scrap of notebook paper, spilling blackened feelings and hidden dreams in a futile effort only good in fairy tales and romances, where flowers and chocolates give way to perfect speeches in perfect rain with a perfect soundtrack.  But I don't have a soundtrack and without that the rest is all in vain, having no more worth than the words of good intention from the talking dummies in the store window, programmed to say all the wrong things for all the right reasons but never able to break through into the bitter reality that only the living know.

Dashboard

Broken glass and a torn screen in the door are signs that maybe the little shack in the middle of nowhere isn't all sunshine and dandylions, and the scattered dust leaves streaks and trails that could be from the frantic movements of a victim fending off a tall man with a knife, or they could be from the shackles dragged here by the already dead.  Sharp grating inside and cold blades outside are a cruel betrayal, because it was never meant to be this way.  But betrayal is a bit of a theme in this place, where there have been more drug deals gone bad than even in the apartment with the missing owner in town.  Twists and knots rake the once untattered brown cord of history that the shack throws across the void that is.  What nobody knows is the builder is still alive, and now he's just praying for someone to give him a lighter so he can cauterize the wound and stop the fraying then and there, before it continues.  Then maybe he'll grab his tools and put new pastel-colored shutters on the place, or maybe he'll just grab his kerosine and burn it all to the ground.

Her Path

Old Bill Yoder's wife died last September. It wasn't much of a surprise - folks had been saying she was slipping for years. There was no specific cause of death; she just went to bed one Saturday night and didn't get up for church in the morning.

Yesterday Bill went about his business as usual. He let the donkey out to run around, milked the cows and left a message on his son who lives in Baltimore's answering machine. After lunch he pulled his tattered plaid coat back on and went outside to chop wood for the fireplace. His bones ached a little with the cold, but he was used to it. He was just thankful for the misty cool he always called "Mississippi weather." It could be a lot worse in Indiana in February.

He dropped his axe twice while chopping wood, and the second time he didn't pick it up. Instead he sat down on a tree stump and looked wistfully down the hill at the path his wife always took through the woods when she needed a think. Bill hadn't set foot on that path all winter. Sometimes he'd wonder if she was down there, walking and waiting for the spring. Sometimes he almost went for a walk, but he always decided at the last minute to let it be. It was his wife's path, not his.

Bill sighed and slowly stood back up, feeling the creaking in his joints. He loaded the wood into the rusty wheelbarrow that used to be green and pushed it back to the front porch.

After a meager supper and two more messages on his son's answer machine, Bill sat down to watch the History Channel. He liked the History Channel because he was seventy and he got to see things that happened when he was nine. At seven-thirty he shuffled to his room and went to bed. He usually stayed up a little later, but he hadn't been to church since Christmas Eve and he wanted to make sure he got up in time to make the fifteen minute drive.

Today is Sunday, but Old Bill Yoder didn't get up for church this morning. Instead he went for a walk on the path through the woods. His wife was there, just like he knew she'd be.

The Cabin

Fresh prints scrunch in the crystalline white layer behind her, new since last night and gently caressing the rolling hills beyond and draping the skeletal trees in its cool embrace. Her lungs are a blazing inferno as she pumps her legs, kicking up plumes of snow like bullets from a misaimed machine gun pittering around her feet, and for a moment she imagines that she's a secret agent whose cover has been blown before she remembers that she doesn't have to imagine at all. Ten paces in the gnarled grasp of a root reaches up and snags her boot, sending her tumbling into the wet like an injured snow angel. She rolls onto her back, feeling the harsh bite of the frost on her face and hands, and summons up all of her inner pain into a shrill scream that would make harpies and banshees quake and flee. She screams unknown curses for forgotten infidelities. She screams hidden pain from the endless assault from all sides, from those who seek to teach her, from those who seek to help her, from those who are blind from their own masturbatory concerns, from the wire she uses to make real all the unplaceable atrocities in the bright red reminder against her pale skin. She screams until her already frozen lungs fail and collapse within her, and her throat feels like she swallowed the glass she put her fist through yesterday.

The sharp smack of the cabin door rings out in the world behind her, and he runs to her, the knight in shining armor but without coat or shoes, his dirty blond hair whipping in the shrill wind. He throws himself to the ground beside her, wrapping his arms around her in a physically awkward, really perfect embrace, hugging her hard because he's trying to let everything melt from her into him. She wishes she could cry but she can't, so she lies silently in his arms for a while, letting the cold chase away the adrenaline until she stands and limps back with him, hoping he is fooled into thinking he helped, ready (only not) for another day just like yesterday.

The Prophet

The dazzling blue flashes stab to the back of my brain with swords sharper than steel, the "ker-chicks" and "ca-chuffs" filling the void around me as I stand patiently waiting the camera to do the spiffy three-sixty swirl that the director loves so much and the lights to come on behind me, silhouetting my figure and making it seem as if I'm some sort of angel sent to berate you for your crimes against God.  But I lost my wings long ago in a hideous battle with myself (there were machetes and chainsaws), and now I stand center-stage to unwelcome applause and unmerited attention wondering, pardonnez mon français, exactly what the fuck I'm supposed to make of it all.  Somewhere out there a woman hikes up her skirt a little too high, and a man holds up his fist and shouts that the revolution is here while the bloated stick-limbed children clamber out of their dung huts, their spindly fingers grasping for food that only Santa Claus can bring and Donner and Blitzen died in a tragic sleigh accident so there goes that hope.  But here I am, alone, fully clothed and utterly uninteresting, hoping that if I try real hard I can sink into the polished woodwork of the stage and pretend that it was meant for someone else all along.

A Secret Place

Somewhere between the bending birch and the murky creek is a soul I once befriended, nameless in the air of the golden wood but well known to every one of the birds that make their homes here, sheltered well from the cats that creep out only after dark and unaware that there is ever a star or a cloud.  I wonder aloud why it is that the seeds carried on the wind denote a presence long since forgotten, but celebrate that there is such a buzz as the one that drifts into my window even now.  The gentle rhythm and molasses clock put me at ease despite the race that's starting just outside my door, and for now I can lay back and become nothing more than somebody's whisper.

Gabriel

The thunderclouds roll in only after the alarm has ceased, the shrill piercing gone and the birds at ease and ready to be snatched up by the tall man in the dark cloak who watches us all with the worst of intentions.  She saw everything despite the failed eyes, spoke words meant precisely for each mortal ear on which they fell, and there could be no denying the waves that lapped merrily in celebration of something beyond all word and feeling.  She was, after all, an angel, and now she's home again.

Crickside

Collections of thoughts on shuffle mode float through my head like drunken hornets, knowing not who they are or where they came from or where they're going but knowing full well that they want to sting me until I'm numb from the pain. I wish they would; numb me, that is, for the sporradic jabs of their stingers aren't doing me any good here tonight. The desk light isn't the sun and the serendipitous ventures of the moon just don't compare to the cool summer breeze that finds me sitting on a fallen tree over the river, watching people go by in kayaks and wishing like hell I were born five hundred years from now in either direction. A pointless wish from a dreamy little boy, a boy who's beginning to think manhood is a lie.

Of Penguins and Polar Bears

The still betrays me, dancing across the pavement and obvious now to myself, watching as I am from the rough wooden tower that is guarded by bears and overlooks a crystal clear lake that you wouldn't think could survive this much pollution.  Yet again I've torn the leaves from a perfectly good tree, but if only they hadn't caught my eye with stars the size of my head then I could be smiling and having tea with penguins and polar bears, who have never shared a home yet unite in their frigid reception that does no good to my Birkenstocks and Lipton.  One day the aurora will sparkle again and there will be no hole in the ice through which to plunge, and maybe the music on the sheet will translate into something with meaning.  Meanwhile, I've nothing but the rain and a piano part that makes me wish I were in a bar, serenading me into yesterday's forever.

The Adversary

The gun lies there in the dirt, matte and maniacal and begging for an enemy, but there are only victims here, half-hidden in the murky shadows of eyelashes and silently screaming for a voice because I've become all too good at tuning them out. But I have my own quest, gun and bullets and all, and I can't be bothered with the stifled moans of the already dying because if I move an inch I'll join them swirling down into the event horizon of eternal blackness. I was knighted once by someone who didn't matter and given a quest of my very own, but what becomes of the knight when the quest proves impossible and his only purpose becomes existence itself? Does he push futilely onward for king and honor, or is it long since time to put up the armor and rejoin the bleached and bland reality of second choices and forever regrets?

Unspeakable

I stand alone in the dawn on a field of rolling hills with flowers and bugs and cold and I wish it could have stayed like this forever instead of fifteen minutes, but soon the sun will be up and everything will be painfully clear and I'll run and run and try to improve the time but I'll only end up exhausted and worn out and waiting for another night to fall so I can see clearly the fox who skirts the edges of my life with a smirk, seeing nothing but my failures and inadequacies, my sins and ignorances, my attacks and betrayals. To him there is no me, there is only what is wrong with me, and his eyes look more and more like mine every time I see him. I wonder how long it'll be before the sun goes behind the clouds forever and the eternal dusk will set in; the world lingering on the edge of blackness, flirting with the dark and toying with the sentiments of all those who fear to walk in the night. I stand alone in the dawn on a field that isn't here, looking out at the hills that don't exist and wishing with every ounce of my being that this world will emerge from the flickering candle and replace the one I don't want, because in all truth there never was a dawn, and there never will be.

Unrequited

I am once again flipping through the tall man's script, searching fruitlessly for the character that will be me just as soon as he takes off the hat and glasses.  I am the priest, driving frantically to return my secret love to her wedding, for I am also the high school sweetheart who's mom thinks he's gay but in all actuality just can't get past the flashing yellow sign pointing out the detour that I have no interest in taking because I know the way.  Things are different under an African sun, iluminating the keyboard and the paper in bright shades of white that fade away after dusk, and it is here that I see more clearly the glimmer of goldfish darting in the transparent waters of the pond, easily identifiable but somehow not marked in my guidebook.