100 Proof

I think that’s a planet, not a star, he said. I took a picture of it last night.

It’s pretty easy to tell, I said. Stars twinkle. Planets glow.

It’s like you, he said. You definitely glow. You don’t twinkle.

Moon over sun brings transformation. When rock hides fire, other aspects shine and clarify. Eyes widen, breath quickens.

Tell me what you’re thinking, he said.

It’s all very interesting, I replied. I knew the details would come to light when they were ready.

The cute guy behind the counter had on an A’s hat, and that was all the opening I needed to drop that I was heading to the game.

On my way out later, he told me to have a fun night, and admitted he didn’t know who the opponent was.

“The fucking Yankees,” I said, and he nodded solemnly.

“Yell at Swisher,” he said. “Seriously. Yell at Swisher.”

I vowed to do so. After all, I have been a member of the church of baseball my whole life. I know the dark side when I see it.

There have been thirty-six other Fourths, other summer nights when the sky exploded and I loved the spectacle. But it was the one where we sat on the dock, lakeside, invited inside the crowd control barriers by a friend with access, that I return to every year. It was the one where I leaned back a bit and felt him catch me, and our sun-warmed legs rested against each other’s. Later that night, he kissed me next to my car in the cul-de-sac, and my heart turned into a spinning, fiery pinwheel of light.

In the words of the Chimila Indians, bone and seed are nearly identical. The hands of the then-living crafted urns large enough to hold a femur, urns with mouths large enough to swallow a skull, then buried it all deep in the earth, giving rise to the growth of those yet to come.

This is my lesson from the ancients: I must profoundly bury one set of bones before new life grows.

“You hold onto the past too tightly,” said the dark-haired woman in the island house. “You must choose to put it away.”

These months have been windier than most, and I feel it more keenly than ever. Everything feels empty, swept clean of option and opportunity. The air passes right through me, rattling the shell of my heart against the bones that cage it. Someone walking by remarks there’s a change in the weather coming, but they’ve said that before. I’d be a fool to believe it.

I scribble solutions on the backs of envelopes, develop complicated theorems that explain the intersection of intellectual and physical desire, and write notes on my wrist: RED (like the flag), SAFE (as I’d like to keep my heart), PATIENCE (I hate this the most).

When I tire of problem-solving, I dance a slow waltz with tears unbound by geometry and calculus. The x and y variables don’t yield easy answers, and my heart breaks when my head can’t solve the problem.

“Show your work,” my math teacher said, and I do. I do. I do.