100 Proof

The sea emerged just before dawn, released to visible by the graying sky above. Darkness, rain, all of it had passed, even though there were still clouds overhead, still waves pounding rocks below. It took miles to get to the manifestation, and though I hadn’t slept nearly long enough, I couldn’t lie back down again. This was just the view I’d been waiting for.

Along that road, soaring trees dissolved into the rainy ink above. We left the car in the lane and walked the road as if it were built for pedestrians.

The sound of tires on the nearby highway whispered through the branches. I listened for cars that might be on our avenue.

No one else drives this in the dark, he said. Worry slipped from me like a leaf.

It would have been easy to take that moment for granted. After all, when all the trees tower like cathedrals, it’s hard to remember each one is monumental as a prayer.

Now we have moved to trapezes, to aerobatics above a tenuous net, and everyone knows how I feel about heights. But there is an intoxicating dizziness only found in leaping from the platform, a satisfaction to holding the bar just tightly enough not to fall, but not so tightly it impedes dazzling tricks.

It’s worth overcoming fear of heights for the right reasons. Sometimes we only get one chance to take that platform leap.

Go, go, go, pounds my heart. Do not miss this.

Quiet acts noisy at times, ringing gong-like amidst the din of living. It is possible to want too much, but not when echoes peal off the walls of ravines.

The clamor fills my ears, stomps into my brain like an invited guest. I can try to keep myself still, but as I walk by the produce salesmen, I realize they watch me; they spot my crooked smile. In my head I hear the reverberations, triggered by memory, known by heart.

I am setting letter after letter into a small box near my heart. With each completed word, I close the lid for a bit, let the new one rest, mix with the other promises already packed away.

But words in combination are volatile as dynamite, and the more I set inside, the harder it is to hold them from bursting forth.

I have emptied my pockets of flint and matches. I hold my breath as I place a new batch of letters. But there is no question about it—these are dangerous times.

For weeks, I have barely attended the conversations around me. I know how to arrange my face, focus my eyes just enough, make appropriate but noncommittal phrases when necessary, but voices chatter like birds, like static, like the hiss of traffic going by outside my window.

I am here, I am several elsewheres. I am now, I am then, I am already ahead of myself. Leave a message, please, and I will return your call when I get away from where I’ve been–when I get where I’m going.

In the pre-dawn, I run past the men sleeping on benches and lighten my footsteps, smooth the edges of my breath–they need their sleep, and I need to feel alone here in the dark, music corralling my spiraling mind, each step forward a meditation on what I’m capable of doing, what I can return from, what I can fix through hard work and what I can’t, that the only direction now is forward, forward, forward, not looking back, not stopping, not waking what should remain in repose, not losing sight of where I’ll be when the sun finally rises.