The best thing that could have happened,
happened to us.
“This is happening because it’s March,” she said,
disappointed. “This is all happening
because it’s March:
at night you spend a long time searching
your pockets for bits of ads,
in the morning emerald grass
grows under your bed,
bitter and hot,
smelling like golf balls.”
□ □ □
In the summer
she walks through the rooms,
catching the wind in the windows,
like an amateur sailor,
who can’t set
the sails.
She stalks drafts,
setting traps for them.
But the drafts tell her,
“Your movements are too gentle,
but your blood is too hot,
you’ll never get
anything in life
with that disposition!
“You lift your palms
too high
to catch the emptiness.”
Everything that slips
out of our hands—is only emptiness.
Everything
we have no patience for—
is only the wind blowing
over the city.
The sun in the sky at dawn
is like an orange
in a kid’s schoolbag—
the only thing with real weight,
the only thing you think about
when you are
lonely.
□ □ □
If I were the postman
on her block,
if I knew where
she gets those certified
letters from,
maybe I’d understand
life better,
how it’s set in motion,
who fills it with song,
who fills it with tears.
People who read newspapers,
people with warm
hearts, good souls,
grow old without letting
anyone know.
If I were the postman
on this block,
even after their deaths
I’d water the plants
on their dry balconies,
and feed the feral cats
in their green kitchens.
Then, running down the stairs,
I would hear her say,
“Postman, postman,
all my happiness
fits into your bag,
don’t give it away
to the milkman or hardened widows,
“Postman, postman,
there is no death,
and there is nothing after death.”
There is hope
that everything will be
just like we want it,
and there is confidence
that everything happened
just like we wanted it.
Oh, her voice is bitter
and imponderable.
Oh, her handwriting is difficult
and indecipherable.
That kind of handwriting
is good for signing death sentences—
sentences no one will ever carry out,
no one will ever figure it all out.
□ □ □
She likes to walk barefoot and sleep on her stomach,
so she can feel the oil flowing underground,
the trees being born in the empty darkness
and the water rising to seep directly under her.
She knows where all the courtyards lead in this city,
and the paths that thieves use from cellars to rooftops.
She knows how to catch kites and blimps without anchors
aided by street patrols and air shepherds.
Every teenager would like to catch her by her shoulder,
knowing that she would escape anyway,
leaving behind only her warmth,
and not believing that she was actually just there.
Every killer watches her disappear into the darkness,
hoping that she will come to him in his dreams,
convinced that she will forget his name.
He’ll never understand
what I mean
to her.
Because she loves to warm her hands in other people’s pockets,
and knows every ticket collector on the night trolley,
she greets them only to interrupt
their loneliness, which lasts till dawn.
Because each of the lost ticket collectors
is chained by their own fear like to a galley,
hopelessly handing out tickets, and looking out the window—
for her, the passenger, who doesn’t care
what stop she gets off at to descend into the darkness,
what unhappy love affair she mourns,
what losses she regrets, what losses she doesn’t,
and what words she will use to tell me about it all.
□ □ □
Her stepfather was odd—
worked as a gardener for a Vietnamese family,
looking after trees, which would have grown without him
in the suburbs, past the factory, in the haze.
He counted off branches, like prisoners count off years,
hunted for foxes,
fed wild dogs straight from his hands.
Everyone thought he was crazy, even she agreed,
but explained,
“I love him, I need him,
so why is he constantly hiding in the trees, in the shadows?
When he steps out into the sun, why does he move so strangely,
as if he knew
where trouble was coming from?”
His employers couldn’t remember his name,
his friends didn’t recognize him, his family rejected him,
and used him to frighten children, who were not scared at all.
They ran after him onto the old railroad tracks,
and when he was sick, they pulled birds’ eggs out of nests,
as if they were taking bulbs out of street lamps.
I saw him only once, in the fall,
I noticed him walking, far away, from the back.
He was wandering in the shadows, frightening the stars,
carrying a ladder to cut some branches.
His demeanor was humble—he was simply exhausted.
That’s how Jesus carried his cross, I thought.
I also thought—this is easy for him,
knowing what to do, not noticing the emptiness,
remembering everything that was, accepting everything that is,
clearly imagining his future,
believing that nothing will change,
guessing that no one will escape,
shifting the ladder from one shoulder to the other.
I said as he passed,
Do what you have to do,
work is only part of our struggle,
faith is the sand that forms the foundation of our years,
and trees can’t really grow without gardeners.
□ □ □
It’s good, he thought, it’s good that I’m dead to her,
good that she’s forgotten my name,
good that this all happened so quickly,
good that I wasn’t there for all of it.