Patron Saint

When I was young,
I was called to my life's ambition.
I imagined this is what prophets felt like
speaking to a burning bush
or hearing God's voice from the heavens.

And I made the mistake
of sharing this guarded secret
with the world.

Their response made it seem
like I was crazy
like I was a heretic.

Some gave me tight smiles and platitudes
that somehow still told me
that I would change my mind.
Some told me outright
that I was too young to make this decision,
that I was too smart to squander my talents,
that they knew me better than I did.

I remained stubborn and sure
despite public opinion.

I tested the waters
and fell in love with the ocean,
so sure it wouldn't drown me.

I had mentors who were living my dream
who told me to change my mind,
not to follow their example.
I swallowed their bitterness in silence
but had no doubt that, in this,
they were wrong.

Years of hard work,
of blood, sweat, and tears,
I was finally able to answer my calling.

In all those years no one asked
where the call had come from.
The burning bush rested inside my chest
and spread like wildfire.

Now body, mind, and soul,
I am glowing with purpose.

The Passion of Victor Frankenstein

I fell into bad habits.

I tried to build a human being

inside my mind.

I chose hair and eye colors

like I was picking up fruit at the market.

I designed his likes and dislikes

so they would fit against mine.

I imagined a family and memories and a relationship

with someone who wouldn’t ever exist.

I picked out a sense of style,

a career,

a personality,

a smile,

cobbled from people who did exist.

In my mind,

I welded these pieces together,

breathed life into a fantasy,

and fell in love with an idea of a person.

Because real people are scary.

And I can barely look most of them in the eye,

let alone talk to them,

make a connection with them.

The idea inside my head,

that person I can’t touch

can’t touch me either.

But it’s not enough.

And it’s so easy to forget,
that even though we are faced with our imminent mortality,

weighted with this reality
the fingers of our gravity reach out.
And grab for wayside individuals
who - despite not saying so - want to accept,
because we are all afraid of our loneliness.

False Memories #924

“Do you ever wonder about us?”

I had imagined this so many times – this conversation – but somehow I hadn’t ever imagined it like this, without any fireworks or skywriting. Instead we stood outside a storefront of a bar, tipsy, with rain drizzling around us. I thought we’d be drunker or that we’d have cigarettes, this seemed like a conversation that could’ve been punctuated with well-timed exhalations of smoke. But we weren’t drunk enough to write this off and we weren’t the same dumb young people who thought cancer burning between their teeth meant we were interesting. We were older now, not much wiser. But wise enough for me to know that I’d been staring a beat too long and he was doing his nervous shuffle from foot to foot.

“All the time.” I exhaled and it was just cold enough that fog followed my words making it as dramatic as cigarette smoke.

He leveled me with a look of mild surprise, cheeks rosy with the alcohol or the chill it was hard to tell. This was one of those silences that could’ve benefitted from a quick puff of smoke from each of us, to fill the space.

“Me too.” He said, looking away and squinting into the distance.

Being a narrative type, I thought the moment was a tad anti-climactic, and I was reminded how devastatingly non-fictional I was.