Spherical Pilgrimage
Lying down in the back of a 2004 CRV covered in crumbs and a thin layer of dust. The trees through the window are getting progressively more orange, obscured, however, by the crack in my eye—the silvery, rainbow crack, reminiscent of a tear in a contact lens or the water breaking in a womb. The tear that is fluid and changing, like a kaleidoscope. The crack was unaccompanied by pain. Mother points at wild horses and grazing cows. She’s asking me to look out the window, to read things off her phone, and to choose the next song, and I can’t see anything.
Sometimes the blind spots last. There’s one currently haunting me out of my left eye. It disappeared for a while at Lake Huron, probably from the cleansing power of the salt. Heavenly feathers crusted to the sand like shellac. The waves, frightful against the city line on the opposite side, beckon surfers from Portugal and adrenaline-seeking sailors. The waters are empty, as is the beach, save for me and Mother and Father. There is a small red shack behind us locked up for the lifeguards. A lighthouse at our opposite, sticking out of the rocks like the hilt of a knife.
They gave me a wine glass larger than my cranium and filled it with red, like they were filling a prescription. And I sat there, feeling out of place, after reading about someone feeling out of place for twelve hours, after writing about people feeling out of place, and being out of place myself for the majority. I am out of place but can generally find the invisible wall to hide behind. I have taken the torch from my mother so she can now find her voice to make a joke. My brother couldn’t put people on edge if he tried. My father, well. He blends so well I can’t find him.
In the car afterwards I’m stuffed in the middle with my knees knocking, full of red and turkey and fresh air. I can see out of both eyes, into vacant grocery stores with the lights on, into gas stations full of homeless people, into parking lots and left turn lanes, and whatever else there is. And I’m hit by it, that invisible wall, full force backing me off the edge. I can feel a phantom behind my teeth begging to get flossed out. You can run across the whole country, bears from North Woods nipping at your heels. You can run across, but there is no such thing as outrunning. Half of your life is for realizing things like this. The truths you were raised on—there is no such thing.
We are talking to each other anonymously in baby blue. I’m in the middle seat in the car on the way home, and I’m crushed with the weight of it. With the salt from the enraged lake. The salt landing on my eyelashes and burning my eyes. Writers think they’re inconspicuous geniuses for putting things in the past tense: I loved, I missed, I wanted. As if these things are not truer every day. These are the only constants, but I don’t want to wax lyrical about them. I don’t know how to write a poem. The poem is the song that comes out of my mouth when I finally tell my parents what happened to us. The poem is the time it would take for me to get to you from any given place. The poem is the wind rushing past my ears, the blood on the pavement, and the pieces of my leg washed away in the rain like wet bread. I ask the red oak tree, how can I change? The poem is the answer; you don’t.