One for the far away friend.
I was thinking about you today,
as I think about you most days.
But this evening, in some different way.
And reverberating throughout me,
an ardent desire to telegraph
this Thought to you
so I could be absolved of writing.
Some telekinetic squeeze of your wrist
to tell you I’m here — and I care.
About you and your state,
and whether you’re satisfied with your station in life.
The latter, not because I think it’s important,
but because I know you do.
Most urgently,
The Thought was to let you know
that I am endlessly curious if you are happy and whole
at some elemental level;
down at the layer free from trappings
of expectations imposed by self or society.
At the layer where we’re still practically kids.
It is an aching curiosity
because if you aren’t — happy, that is —
I want to know what I can do to fix it.
I know the answer is not much.
I cannot throw money at it.
But that, and my seemingly endless capacity
to love you always,
are about all I can offer
besides the lesser gifts of my time and my ear.
These gifts I know you would refuse
because I suspect, like me,
you must hold the stubborn belief
that your existence is some imposition
rather than the treasure it is.
I cannot text you this!
Because what that laconic,
short-form medium
has reduced us to
are banal pleasantries
and bizarre turns of phrase
like “hope you’re well!”
As if it matters the hope is sincere
when well is the best we can wish for,
since great lies so far out of reach.
It has stolen from two close friends,
separated by miles and miles,
the ability to be earnest and vulnerable
with one another.
Whose colloquy
across a slice of time
can remain in our memory
like genre painting encased in a snow globe.
We have so many of them,
those snow globes.
We’ve had so many texts too.
But those are filed away obsequiously;
meaningless, chronological, digital entries
in a feelingless log book
constrained by the laws of bits and bytes.
I prefer the snow globes.
I can see them now,
lining the shelves of that room in my mind
I keep for Us.
Absent of any semblance of order,
but all there nonetheless.
But each of our tender exchanges,
no matter how oh so vivid
and tenderly three dimensional,
is still — as is the snow globe’s curse —
behind glass,
just like The Rare Paintings at the museum.
As much as I want to hold them
and shake them
to see if they spring to life,
some watchful docent makes clear
that I may only crane my neck,
hands clasped behind my back,
careful not to step beyond the line.
So instead I peer from side to side,
and bottom to top,
hoping to spot some detail I’ve missed.
One lost to memory,
but not to time,
somewhere in front of me,
preserved and surely discoverable
if I could just look close enough.
Alas, in this place,
I am afforded no loupe
and can only hope that by chance and repetition,
or the observant intuition of age,
the eyesight of my mind sharpens enough
that one day I spot one of those little details
that animates the lifelike figures
within their hermetic rotunda
and can see — ahh — you were happy then,
so you must be happy now.
Maybe this brings me comfort
while we log text after text,
and I wait until next
we can put one more snow globe on the shelf.
for L.N., whose texts and snow globes I cherish equally
