Elijah has spent Christmases in Florida at Cocoa Beach ever since the incident on Christmas Eve when he was 17 that led him to despise the holiday with the desire to wipe away all memories and thoughts of the dreadful night 5 years ago. He's an aspi...
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28 AUGUST | 1987
The way you stood there and smiled when we were alone on the trampoline was like a poem. Eyes on the stars and mouth ajar, you lay there with words in your mouth you'll swallow because if you don't, you will choke. And you looked up there, at the moon, with a magnetic glow in your eyes, like candied pecans dusted with golden coffee.
I wish you would look at me that way, too. Wish your eyes glowed when they met mine, but mine shone under blue skies while yours glistened in the dark. We were of two different area codes that couldn't coincide. And yet, you are the brightest star I have seen, and I haven't stopped admiring you since you've been here with me.
On the trampoline, you're a poem with stanzas I'm trying to read with the lights off. You are an enigma of anecdotes, at a lack of any true meter, deeply encoded with similes that remind you who you are on days the sun over shines. You are a poem past 9, a piece of art when the sky is given to the night.
You stood, and you smiled, and you lay down right by my side, and despite your abundance of stanzas, you let the words remain locked in your mind.
"TRAMPOLINE STANZAS"
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Most of my dad's things were gone with him, but there were a few things he'd backed up onto computer files, flash-drives, and even a few of his journals I'd managed to save unscathed. I read them when I didn't know what to do with myself. When I felt lost. Hopeless. It happened a lot around this time of year. And so I read what I could.
He wrote about my mom before they were together. Like he saw her for the first time, and already knew that he would have so many things to say. And he did.
He used to tell me that him and my mom were friends first, and he felt as if they'd never be anything more. Not because feelings weren't shared, but because they were. I remembered almost exactly what he told me–
"It felt like we couldn't be together. We had so much love and care for each other, but we both buried it so deep. I was more outspoken than her, but I'd never loved anyone like that before, so I was afraid. And she was quieter than I was, though not quiet when you got to know her. There was this ... magnetic energy between us. Any time we were close to each other, it's like the surrounding air morphed into this bubble of attraction, tension. We had a lot of moments like that. Like the trampoline. In our college years, we went to parties, we'd cross paths, and there would always be a moment like this. A moment that deserved to be written about. Even if, inherently, nothing happened."
Sometimes, I could write words like my dad did. But mostly, the words died with him, and I stuck to what I knew best, which was photography. It worked for me. It conveyed the words I wanted to say, even when I didn't know how. Even when my dad's guidance growing up couldn't give me the full courage to say what I wanted to say. I could speak up, I could be bold enough to do what I needed to. But sometimes, the words died with me, too. And they just turned into pictures, instead.
