Tornado

Out of nowhere,

from nothing,

unexpected ,

you came down.

You came down

and danced.

Whirling, spinning,

lost and oblivious

to all but the thunder,

the pounding beat that

has captured you entirely.

You exist, you are, but

only in dance do you live

and only in dance can you be.

But this dance that you are,

in its turns and its steps,

is destruction.

The vortex of joy,

of being, that is you,

tears and breaks everything

in it's path.

Still, you dance, you are.

I am caught in the way, and swept

into your song

and all my gaurds, my fears

and my hide-beihnds

are torn apart, removed,

and ever so gently, obliviously

you lift my heart

and take it for your own.

And you dance on

you dance, you ARE

away...

An E-Hug

Hi Maggie! Hi Susan! I love you guys!

Lost in a moment

I lived.
I lived and I wanted.
I wanted to be,
and in being, to be
an artist. I wanted
to create a masterpiece.
I wanted, so I went
out
and got it.
For canvas, I chose
the world.
On that canvas I
scraped
out
my
soul.
I poured out on it
every tear
that ever dropped from my
eyes
and bled from my
heart.
I threw on to it
every laugh that flew
from my mouth
and every smile
I ever meant.
I burned into it
all the anger that
ever clenched my body
and every shade of hate
ever to
sear
my
soul.
I froze on my canvas
every fear that
stopped my heart
and every anxiety and
worry
that shook my
mind.
Inside my canvas
I lit
every joy, every happy
thought that brightened
just one day
I lived.
I vomited onto my canvas,
I dreamed onto my canvas,
I laid out every part of
me
onto
my canvas,


until I was my canvas


and the artist formerly
known as me
stood back and gazed
on the greatest
Sidewalk-Chalk Mural
ever created
in the history of man
and he wept at its
perfection.
With the fall of his first tear
it began to pour rain.

Timber

*this may be my first semi-legit beat poem. As you read, please pretend it is me, reciting it and accompanying myself with the bongos, and dressed completely in black with sunglasses. NO beret though. My head's too ginormous for hats and my hair's to bushy.

I, Lumberjack
have a knack
for taking whacks
with my axe
to ponderous, proud, pine.
You, tall tree, see me
Approach
and bite blade
to your body.
Noble Pine, stretching high
I make you mine
with each swing, thrust, and cut
I take a chunk, a hunk
from your trunk
until the roots, your roots,
life giving trails and tails
who feed needs and strive
to keep you alive,
the anchors of time,
from which so high you climb,
are cut
off
and you die,
in one fell fall
one deep descending dive
into you doom.
Heralded by my cry, one wailing,
loud lusty sonorous shout
of
TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR!
a tree falls in the forest with only me to hear it.
I move on to the next.

Questions

Why did this happen? Why now, so completely out of the blue? What happened to our plans? Everything happy in my life reminded me of you, and right now I need you to not be in my head. I guess that means I can't be happy. Not right now. Every time you told you loved me, I knew it was true. Every time we talked about the future, about how no matter what could be there the one thing we knew was that we would be together for it, I knew it would happen. You were my future. I had you and i had happiness. I was alive. And now you say you can't. You can't do this. I need to focus on my mission. I can't focus on anything but this aching, throbbing hole in my chest. How can my heart still be beating? Every pulse hurts worse because my heart is still yours. Each beat is your name, a name i can't hear right now because every beat makes that hole bigger, makes it hurt worse. I'm sorry I wasn't good enough at being your boyfriend. I'm sorry I couldn't make you feel good enough about being in a relationship with me even though we were so far apart. I love you, I love you more than anything. My love is so strong that the distance didn't exist to me. I guess you didn't love me enough to feel the same. I'm sorry it was so hard for you. I gave you every chance to back out, to see if you could do this before I gave you my soul. I saw this coming when we started, and I let you take away all my concern. You told me you could do this, and I believed you. Every time we talked about where we were going to be, were you just going along with it because it was fun? What did I do wrong? Was my entire life not enough for you? Why would you show how to truly be alive and then just rip that away from me? I need you. This hole is the place where i kept you. At first it was just in my heart and then you started filling more and more space until you filled all of me. And now you're gone, and I've got this hole. Could my body live without a brain? Then how could my soul live without you?

Subtext

3 words
never said enough
I love you
Every part of me
is those 3 words
I love you
Every blink of my eyes
somehow says
I love you
Every breath I breathe
screams
I love you
Each step I take
each sound I make
is those three words
I love you
My heart beats, it pumps
not blood, but 3 words
I love you
For every fallen autumn leaf
I tell you
I love you
For every winter snowflake
snowed, know that
I love you
For every spring flower
every summer shower
I love you
For always, Forever
I love you
I love you
I love you

Treasure Hunt

I call your name
I seek you out
hunt desperately for you
and find
mile after mile after
mile
between us
billions of potential footprints
potential
connecting
my heart
to yours.
I search other places,
the sunset
that we both see
and feel your heart beat
with mine.
I search a brilliant night sky
and see in it
the reflection
of your eyes.
I search in
the most beautiful melodies
and find your voice, your laugh
calling my name.
I search the wind, the breeze
invisibly
and find you, your
scent, your perfume, pure
clean, and perfect.
I search the petals of a flower
the velvet touch, so delicate,
and feel your lips, brushing mine
across a billion steps
and in every beautiful
place and thing
I find only you,
and with you I leave
an infinite embrace
a kiss from my soul
and a piece
of my
heart.

Just freeze, take a breathe
take a plunge, take a lap
because everything's moving too fast where your're at
play catch up before it's too much to control
and fight with your life to stay whole.

Dance like you're on fire
just dance to be free
dance like no ones watching
like no one can see
you can't shake the feeling
that you're not alone
you feel your footprints follow you home

Dance like you're on fire
just dance to be free
dance like no ones watching
like no one can see
you can't shake the feeling
that you're not alone
you feel your footprints follow you home

Bedbugs

Night, enter, creep and cascade
descend down steps of dusk
and embrace your kingdom.
Live, night.
Inhale the illuminations,
the blaze of light
distinguishing day.
Breathe out blacks and blues
release your stars,
and grant the glow
of Mother Moon to
the aural outlines
and shadows, silhouettes
demons and rulers,
gods of the night,
those that would be but
mundane by day, by reality.
Enter, dreams, fantasy and
myth. Real reality retreats, and
that which is and can only be real
by starlight rules.
Dare, dream, imagine and see
possibilities destroyed by day,
sucked dry by sun, now explode
into imagined truth, truth only imagined,
but still true. For
now is night, now is life
that cannot be in awakening hours,
but is now. Nocturnal nocturne,
vital lullaby, sing to life
lies now true and dreams now real.
We are now, we are in night,
and in night,
Day, is but the dream.

Heaven

If all the stars in the night sky were suddenly gone
I'd still always see them twinkling in your eyes.
If every note of every song, if all music up and evaporated into thin air
I'd still hear the most beautiful melody in the world every time I heard you laugh.
If the sun went out and the moon left, and every light on earth burnt out
All I'd ever need is your smile to light my world.
If every blanket, coat, jacket, or sweater disappeared
It wouldn't matter because your embrace, your hand in mine would be warm enough on the coldest night I could ever see.
They say that Heaven is everything beautiful and good in this world.
But if every beautiful, good thing in this world were gone, as long as I still had you I'd be in Heaven.
A flower lasts a day.
A jewel can last forever.
But you, you last for right now, and right now
I will always be in Heaven.

Wish upon a star

I want to be free
free to be me
is to be free.
to be free I need
to feel free to
be me, to break out
and be me, be free,
just to be.
I want to be free
to be free I must see
what can be, and
that I can be free
and that I am me.
I want to be free,
to feel me as I
be, and feel free
to become what might be
and what might be
might still be me,
but me, just me
being free.

Personal ad for a toaster

Handsome, deep toaster with aluminum plating and 3rd and 4th slots
Seeks companion. Same appliance-type preferred, but am very open to anything
But not blenders.
Likes: Bagels, cinnamon bread, and getting it just perfectly golden brown. Enjoys camping and just spending time relaxing unplugged.
Dislikes: any bread with onions in it, cords that are too long, and undercooking things.
I PROMISE NOT TO BURN YOU.

Falling

I took this trip without a map
Seeing you just in the distance
Blindly hoping that I’d find a path
To you
And you’re finally at the end
But you are just below my reach
So I fall, but how I’ll land
I’ve got no clue
I’m only hoping
I’ll land on my feet
With you

I’m falling
Are you waiting
I’m falling,
falling fast
I’m just falling
Will you catch me?
I’ve been falling since
I fell in love with you


The road of life has brought me
To this crossroads with a cliff
Should I run away
Or should I take the plunge?
And an air of indecision
Crams into the air around me
I breathe in deep
It permeates my lungs
With that one breathe
I close my eyes and jump

And now I’m falling
What’s at the bottom?
I’m falling
I’m falling hard and blind
I’m falling,
Will you try to catch me?
I’m only falling now
Because I fell for you

With wind screaming past my ears
I hear your name
And my pounding heart beats faster
All the same
But pulse it makes
Now isn’t meant for me
Since I met you
Yours is all my heart
Could ever hope to be

I’m falling
Will you catch me
I’m falling
I’m falling
To you

I wrote one like this a while ago. The subject's changed though.

You, you are my dream at
pause of mind
my heart is yours
my every exhale screams your name
invisibly
and I?
I am filled with golden hope
that I then steal and imprison
within a vault of "what if"s and precautions
I hide behind this wall of nothing
too safe, too cowardly to tell you,
you, who own me unknowingly,
the subject of my every wish,
for your hand for my hand,
your lips for my lips,
your eyes to fall into...
Radiant Angel,
I bare you my soul,
it is yours.
Do with it
as
you
will...

Dark

I’m afraid of the dark. Go ahead, laugh. I don’t care. I know what the dark really means, what’s there. You couldn’t know, ever, how much you should really be afraid of the dark. I’ve got your attention, what could I be talking about? Listen, and I’ll try to tell you.
We sleep in the dark. Apparently adults can’t find the stillness we need in order to fall asleep without veiling the normal distractions visibility brings in darkness. Sleep, possibly humanity’s greatest physical weakness. We need it to live, yet it leaves us completely vulnerable, unaware of what goes on around us, anyone or anything could come up and do anything and we wouldn’t know. Of course, you say, we’d wake up, but by then it’s too late. What is this thing that could possibly be so terrifying in the dark, you wonder. Vampires? Werewolves? Ghosts or Bogeymen? None of these, my unfortunate friend. That thing that so deeply inspires my own fear of the dark is me. What could I possibly be, you wonder. Not anything so cliché as a vampire, or the bogeyman. Of course you haven’t heard of me, I can only exist in the dark, the unseen, so no one really know who I am. I’m that doubt, that fear, and that question in everyone’s mind, the doubt in oneself, the fear of inadequacy, and the question of one’s worth.
I am thoughts, and I am fear. Indeed, everyone’s greatest fear, that in the end, no matter how hard you try, how much you succeed, you failed at life. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that I, who torment humanity, was created by humanity itself. Indeed, you could say that I am what make people human in the first place. Why then do I fear the dark? I do not fear for myself, but for you, for mankind. I am immortal, for as long men exist, I shall too. But the dark is when I am strongest. Flicking off the lights, then laying down, trying to empty your mind to hold the void of sleep, you are pulling me in, and I slip in to do my job. I whisper reminders, things you did or didn’t do, right or wrong, incorrectly or correctly, it doesn’t matter, because you start to wonder. You start to doubt, and I am there. Even when you do let sleep take you, I am still there, in dreams, or nightmares, and you still wonder, question yourself.
So here is my warning. Keep your distraction out when you go to sleep. Dim them if you must, but accept your inner child, and let that nightlight keep me out. Fear the dark. For I am there, whether in darkness of world, or darkness of mind. Fear the dark, for I will always be there. Fear the dark.

Right

My hand is empty.

So I try to fill it.

I try to fill it
with words,
but they leak out
through pens, and pencils,
and type.

I try to fill it
with pictures
but they escape
through paint and brush,
or charcoal, or another pencil.

I try to fill it
with music,
but it falls out
through valves or keys
or bow or strings.

My hand is empty.

And I try to fill it.

But the only thing that truly can
is yours.

Part 3

“Wait!” Lucifer’s cry pierced the haze of noise permeating the air, and silence returned. “This cannot be right. You would allow your children to be lost? Father, why would you cast us from you, evict us from you and our mother?” The hurt, the confusion, and the doubt that stormed through Lucifer’s mind erupted from is words. “Please, Father, you cannot be serious.” Love and compassion saturated our Father’s reply.
“Lucifer, my son, if you truly consider this plan, you will see that this is the way things must be.” He stood, and left, signaling the end of the meeting. Lucifer flaed to his rooms, and sobbed, trying with all his might to comprehend how this plan, this new life could possibly be correct. But he couldn’t. It couldn’t not fit into what was right and true in his heart, and he finally came to a conclusion. He sent out word, and later, in private, a new meeting was held.
“Brothers and Sisters,” Lucifer’s soft voice rang out over the crowd before him. “Something has happened to our elder Brother, Jehovah. He has deceived our Father, and somehow he has convinced him that what cannot be right must come to pass. He has convinced our Father to cast us from his presence, and allow us to fall away from him forever. I do not know what evil could have pressed Jehovah to do this. But it has happened, and we must end this sway he has created over our Father and Mother who we love with all our existence.” Cries of agreement, and dissent clashed out. Lucifer restored attention. “I have called you, those whom I trust and know must see this as well, to aid me. We who are assembled number enough to take back Jehovah and cure him of whatever harm grips his mind. I ask you, as more than half the host of Heaven, to rise up with me and cure our Family. Those of you, be there any, who feel you cannot do this, please walk away now, that I may see those loyal to our Father, to our Mother, and begin our plans. Say nothing as you leave, and leave in love.” Many left the meeting there, leaving about one third of the family of God, to plan how they might restore their family and Jehovah…

Soon after the meeting, a host of Children approached Jehovah and their Father, who were in the midst of planning for the new Earth. Lucifer was at their head, and Jehovah came up to meet him.
“Lucifer, what is the meaning of this?” No anger, or annoyance showed in his face, merely confusion, and hurt.
“Jehovah, this is not right, and we cannot allow you to force our Father to cast his own children from him forever.” Lucifer too, was not angry or malignant, and tears poured down his resigned face. “If you come with us now, we will help you, and this can all be repaired.” Jehovah shook his head, and tears shone on his face as he sadly shook his head. “Lucifer, it must be this way.”
“Then we must do what we must to stop it.” He raised his hand, and a throng of souls surged forward to take Jehovah.

Part 2

Jehovah's plan was soon done. And so a great meeting was held, in which our Father told us our time had come to go out and grow up, because we had reached a point where we could go no further living with our parents. He asked Jehovah for his plan, and our brother presented it.
"We're going to a new, physical world, where we will experience a new way of living and do things that we cannot even imagine. We know what we would need to do, but part of the growth we will experience in this new world will involve losing our memories that we have now for just a little while. We will have to learn anew what we must do in order to return to our Father. I'll help and teach as much as I can, and I'll even come down to create the way so we can come back. But all of it will be through our Father, and it will All be because of and for him that we succeed. It will ultimately be up to every single individual person where they end up, and there will be people who do not end up back with our Father to become like Him. Because that's what we're aiming for. That's the reason we're leaving our safe family here, so that we can take the next step to having our own worlds and families. And that glory that we obtain, the glory I will get and every one of my brothers and sisters will attain is our Father's. Truly, the greatness of a parent is measured through the greatness of his children. This is what we must do." Jehovah stepped back, and allowed his plan to sink into everyone's minds. Discussion immediately broke out, and the buzz of voices rumbled out in a haze of sound. A clear voice suddenly broke through.
"I have another way." Lucifer Stepped forward, hoping that his father would grace him with permission to present the plan he believed in with his entire being. Our Father saw trouble coming, but nodded, allowing Lucifer to continue. "Jehovah's plan sends us out blindly, expecting us to wander naked and possibly return back to our family again. How can someone toss a handful of salt into the wind, and then expect to be able to find them all again?" Lucifer's words were encountering a soft current of noise that Jehovah had not. "I too know what must happen, that we must be torn from our safe shelter, our home and family so that we may continue to progress. But why should we be forced to risk the chance that our trials in this new life might be for naught in the end? Why should we go out knowing that we may not be able to come back? Here then, is my plan. I will come to this new world, this Earth, and lead us all back to our father. No one will have to worry about being cut off from our Father and Mother. We will ALL be able to return to progress more with our Master who we love so dearly. And as our leader, I will take us into the new age of progression, a new Physical age. Truly, the greatest parent's success is to see their children surpass them, and I will do that." with those last, stirring words, Lucifer stepped back. The undercurrent of discussion that had been softly accompanying Lucifer's speech immediately grew into a flood of discord. Argument and debate over who was correct broke out. But silence was quickly restored as our kind Father stood, and raised his hand.
"My children, my two eldest sons, your older brothers, have presented 2 plans for you to be allowed to come even closer to myself. I do not tell you that you must choose one or the other, for only one will work. This is not simply a trip, a vacation and test that you may be dragged through. You must be able to choose of yourself, to decide through your own actions whether you will return to me. Though it pains me to do this, and i know that some of you will not come home to me, I must send you out with that chance. Jehovah has truly devised a wise plan that allows you to do exactly what you must to prepare for a physical, immortal life." He sat, having given his judgment, and the tidal wave of dissension sprang back up. Lucifer sat, stunned that his Father, his kind, wise Father whom he knew LOVED his children, would allow them to be lost.

I'm not prophet, or a deep thinker. This is just how I see it.

Our bodies are only as old as our birthdays tell us. But our souls, our spirits, had to come from somewhere. We had a lot going on before we came down here to earth, and this is just a small part of what we're going to end up doing. But I want to talk about what happened before we came here. We all were together doing things and learning as a big family for a really long time. We had a father, who we now call God. I'm sure we had a mother. And we had older siblings, and younger siblings. But there were two brothers who were around first, and we loved them. The second oldest was Lucifer. He was amazing, and we looked up to him and he loved his younger siblings and taught us and helped us. And then there was Jehovah. He was the eldest, the first born, and we loved him too. He was amazing. He was kind, and wise, and we all wanted to be just like him someday. Jehovah and Lucifer were great friends as well as brothers, and they both loved helping their family, especially their younger siblings. Eventually, we were all ready for the next big part of our lives, our destinies. And our father took his eldest sons, our big brothers, and told them: "You two are my most trusted sons, the ioldest and wisest of my children. Our family is ready for a new chapter in life, and it's time for my children to move out and get ready to have their own families. But it's going to be hard, and they aren't going to remember this life they have now. So I want you two to come up with a way to help them, because I know you love them, and that you will be able to make sure they have what they need to succeed." So the two brothers went to brainstorm. And as brothers will, soon a small quarrel sprang up.
"Jehovah, I don't like this plan." Lucifer was a little confused. "It's pretty hard. Can't we make it any easier?" Jehovah smiled in that kind understanding, wise sort of way.
"Lucifer, we've got to trust our brothers and sisters. Mom and Dad have taught them a lot. This as much as we can do." Lucifer looked at his brother, and a thread of frustration started to weave itself into his heart.
"Jehovah, this plan makes it so they might not make it where they should be." Jehovah's smile didn't leave. "Jucifer, we have to give them choices. That's part of why they're going." new threads of anger wormed their way into the tapestry weaving in Lucifer's heart.
"Well I think we can make it easier." and with that, he left.

End part one

A complimentary Rant

I'm annoyed. This isn't a poem, so if that's why you read my blog, you can skip this post, because it's a rant (I only say this because I like to pretend there's more than 5 people who know about my blog and more than one person who reads it regularly. If there does happen to be a ghost reader that I don't know about, it'd make my day if you'd give me a shout out...). Anyways, here's what's up. I'm am one of those chosen few people in this world who regularly gives out SINCERE compliments. If I like someone's hair, or clothes, or something they did, I actually tell them. Shocking, I know. But something has happened to our society when it comes to compliments, and it bugs the crap out of me. Nobody seems to be able to accept compliments, at least from me. It seems like whenever I tell someone I like their hair or their work, they have to tell me exactly why I'm wrong. I don't like being wrong, and in my eyes, I wasn't when i gave the compliment, and just because you told me how crappy the hair I thought looked nice is, doesn't mean I don't still think it looks nice, it just means that I'm kind of mad that you called me stupid. I'm not saying that EVERYONE reacts this way, but there seem to be more people who don't want to accept the compliment than people who do. Or, if they don't argue with me, they just say "thanks" in a confused, "how on earth could that guy be so blind as to think I looks nice today..." kind of way. And even if that's not what they intend, that's the message they send. For example, today I told a friend I thought she looked nice today. She wasn't dressed up, in fact she was wearing sweats and a T-shirt. But she looked nice. It's not like she looked like she'd just gotten out of bed, and i liked her hair. But of course, she had to point out the fact that she wasn't wearing fancy clothes and that she'd slept in this morning. So for future reference, if I give a compliment, that's exactly what i meant to give you. So take the warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction that comes with it and enjoy it. And try to give your own SINCERE compliments more often. Maybe if it becomes a little more common, people as a whole will start believing that we actually mean the compliments we give again.

Averted

I just wrote this. I think I'll read this one at the FLOBOTS concert instead of the other one. I like it better. Please, I still need feed back!

Averted
Can you see?
Did you see the bruises on the woman you passed in the store this morning, gifts from a boyfriend who knocks the life out of her piece by piece with every present he drops?
Can you see?
Did you see the t-shirt prophets, sermonizing on street corners, peddling their powdered salvations, surrounded the empty-shelled mannequins of their caged converts who sold their souls away by the hour?
Can you see?
Did you see the lost souls, the modern nomads whose minds have hidden until they can only rattle around in their skulls like the cans rattling in their bogarted carts?
Can you SEE?
Did you see those kids with their arms and thighs tattooed with permanent train tracks left by their short vacations into control and release, rides on the edge?
Can. you. see?
Did you see those children, with bodies wasting away from their hunger or food almost as much as their souls are wasting away from their hunger for one tiny whisper of affection?
CAN YOU SEE?
Can you see the shadows and ghosts of a consciously ignorant society, a world so eager to label away their problems, to file them into corners and closets, and then leave them, cheerfully choosing to forget, to whitewash over the mold and marks of desperation on the wall left by PEOPLE that were obliterated into echoes and smoke by those with the power to improve but averted their eyes because it was easier?
Can you see?
because let me tell you, as a whole country, as a whole world, we don’t.
We put up our rose colored windows and mask our shame behind what’s "in", and what’s "now". We infuse our ears with iPod anesthetic, hide behind tabloid tablets and pay-per-view pills from the helpless and hopeless, and deem them dirt on the soles of our designer shoes.
Let me tell you,
Averting our eyes doesn’t stop a tidal wave from crashing to shore.
and until we start seeing
we’re blind.
Here's the thing:
Until we start SEEING
we're blind.

News

So the Matthew Shepard symposium is the week after next, and the FLOBOTS are coming down to perform at the university. For those of you who don't know who the FLOBOTS are, here's a link to their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/flobots They do a lot of social injustice hip hop stuff, and they just got signed by a huge record label, so this could be one of their last performances not dominated by commerciality. Anyway, the high school is sending 3 kids to read an original poem about social injustice and that kind of stuff at the concert. And the the cathedral home is sending a person too. At least, that was the plan. But the cathedral home hasn't gotten back to the teacher in charge yet so she was looking around the student body for a fourth. I happened to have a poem that sort of fit the criteria, so i showed it to her and she picked me for the place filler. It's pretty awesome, but my poem definitely is not among my best work. So I'm going to improve it until I actually have to read it. it's posted on here, but I'm reposting it on this one, edited and improved. Any feedback and critique would be greatly appreciated. I hate the title, so any suggestions there would be great too. Thanks!

Ear Unplugs

Let thunder roar
let lightning flash
if you think you see
it's just the mask
don't get too close
you might get burned
just hide within
the lies you've learned
stay safe within illusion’s sphere
ignore the painful
truths you hear

we shelter in
the social norm
and mold ourselves
to popular form
we plug our ears
and hide our eyes
with wax made from
acceptable lies

though truth can hurt,
while it can scare
you know it's best,
though it can tear
to see the truth
within your soul
can shred your heart
or leave you whole

accept what's there
or make a change
it's up to you
how life's arranged
but only when
you know what's true
can you be free
to love what's you

so ditch the cowards
leave the mask
conforming throng
the hiding mass
rip out the ear plugs
and pull off the blinds
and you’ll be surprised
what you happen to find

though there might be pain
both in flesh and in heart
there’s the promise of better
just waiting to start
accept yourself
and be what's right
acceptance only in your sight
is something for which
all must fight

it's hard for anyone to be
the them they want the world to see
but if the masks and lies were gone
Maybe we could be free to see a new dawn

OW!

I let go
finally able to unclench my fingers
out of the death grip with which I was
desperately clinging to that last,
impossibly thin thread
of hope.
and now I fall, fall, fall,
and I hurt so bad
that I don't even get to enjoy
the thrill and rush
I can't even notice the wind
whistling, screaming in my ears.
I hurt so bad that
when I hit the ground
and shattered, I barely noticed
because I was already
so broken when I let go.
What's a little more pain?
So here I am,
laying in a pile of debris,
a scattered collection
of shattered me.
hurting. a lot.
but at least now
I'm actually broken.
and since I'm finally broken
I can start putting my pieces
back together.
No more
waiting to be broken.
I'm there.
Thanks.

Final Copy of My Father's Sword

My Father’s Sword
Those hooves, those hammering, ruthless hooves pounding down, down, down. I cursed the dust clogging the air, hiding everything but those hooves and the occasional flash of color from a glimpse of my father’s costume. A pulsing heat was invading the left side of my face, casting a blurred shine to everything I saw. I was running, calls of warning missing my ears completely. I was wrapped in a silence punctured only by the frenzied tattoo of my own heartbeat. I reached my father just as the handlers got the bull penned. His body was surprisingly straight, lying still on the ground. His cape was lying twenty feet away in a crumpled heap. I knelt and gripped his hand, staring, my eyes desperately trying to suck a sign of movement from his chest. His mouth twitched, and a whisper pierced the deafening drumbeat flooding my head.
“Manny.” My name, gurgled past his lips. I leaned in closer. “I love you.”
“Papa, don’t go! Please-” Another thundering whisper cut me off.
“Please, son. Just listen. Take care of your mother. Treat her like the goddess she is.” A rivulet of blood crawled out of the corner of his mouth. “Remember to live with passion, as I taught you. We are Spain.” He coughed, sending another crimson snake slithering out of the other side of his mouth. “I will always be with you.” The medics were there, trying to take my father from me, trying to pull his hand from mine. I couldn’t let go. It took three men to pull me away from my father. I didn’t scream. Not with my mouth. I just stood there, listening to the agonized, tortured symphony pouring from my heart, the blood of my shattered soul leaking from the corners of my eyes. The hilt of my father’s sword was burning in my other hand, welding itself to my fist.
That was when I woke up. I didn’t wake up suddenly, or all at once. Tears were still slipping down my face as I crawled out of slumber. Every night I had gone back. Every night, I was back to that moment. Stuck, reliving those infinitely long seconds when my father had been ripped from my life. The scar on my face was burning as though it had reopened, and I brushed it with my fingertips, a raised pink line sitting on my cheekbone. I didn’t need to look at the clock. I knew I had awakened at the same time as every night before, and that there were still a good 4 hours before daylight would even consider oozing over the horizon. I turned over in my bed, not wanting to let sleep steal me back. I started school tomorrow, and I knew that I needed rest. But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my eyes. I sat up and turned on my lamp. Reaching into the gap between my bed and the wall, I pulled it out. It had become part of me in those moments when I watched the EMT’s covering my father on the stretcher and hoisting him into the ambulance, the white and red hearse that drove my father away. I pulled it out of the scabbard, staring at the light that danced along its edge. I pulled off my covers, and got up. An idea had struck me, and I started rummaging through one of the many unpacked boxes sitting of the floor of my room. I found what I was looking for, and sat on the edge of my bed.
As I opened the cleaning kit, I thought back to when Papa and I used to clean his sword, both before and after his fights. We talked about everything, school, sports, especially bullfighting, and simply about life in general. It was a time when just the two of us were together, and we weren’t just father and son. During those times, we were friends and equals. I would tell him about girls at school, or things that bothered me, and he would tell me about work, stories about when he was my age, and about things he and Mom did when they were younger. I started running the oiled cloth over the blade, and a few leftover tears began to leak out again. One landed on the handle, but I ignored it.
“You know, saltwater isn’t good for the blade.” I looked up, startled. “Over here, son.” I looked at the end of my bed, and saw my father, sitting there in his matador costume, clean and whole, but still surrounded by that shiny blur he had had when I held him in the ring.
“Papa?” I decided that I was in a new dream, and hoped that this one wouldn’t turn into another nightmare. “You’re gone Papa. What are you doing here?”
“Obviously you need me more now than heaven does.” His reply was soft and warm, but tinged slightly with a wistfulness that I understood more deeply than anything I had before.
“You’re not real, are you?” It wasn’t completely a question, but not a statement either.
“It doesn’t matter whether I am or not. You need me, and I told you I’d always be with you.” He came over closer to me. “I’m not a ghost, or an angel really. Now what’s going on?”
“I can’t sleep, Dad.” I kept cleaning the sword as I spoke, and it was just like it used to be. “I keep seeing you die, over and over. I miss you.” The tears threatened to return, but I kept them dammed.
“Did I ever tell you about the day my father died?” He hadn’t, and I realized then that he had only been a few years older than I was now when Grandfather and been gored to death. “I wasn’t there, because I was resting from a fight I had just finished. I rushed out, and rode with the ambulance that took him to the hospital. I kept wondering, asking myself, why couldn’t I have stopped it.”
“Dad, you weren’t even near him or the bull. There was nothing you could have done.” And it was my fault in the first place that you fell. If I hadn’t gotten hit by that rock…
“Manny, I know that. But grief does things. For weeks, I blamed myself, dumb though it was. I kept seeing him under the bull, or gored by the bull, or lying broken on the field. I told myself, if only I’d been there, if I’d been one of his lancers. It was his only match that I’d missed, and all because I was too damn tired to go watch it.”
“Dad? Do you still think it was your fault?” Because it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t gotten hurt and made his father turn away from the bull, hadn’t made him trip and get trampled and trampled, and trampled…I had finished cleaning the sword, and was sliding it back into its sheath as sobs vibrated my body. I couldn’t look at my father. Suddenly I felt his hand on my head.
“Manny, you have school tomorrow. You need to sleep.” I felt him gently pull back my covers, and I laid down. The blankets slid over me, and I heard his voice, softly singing an old Spanish lullaby that he had sung me to sleep with until I was seven years old. The last thing I felt before I dozed off was his kiss on my head. I wasn’t crying anymore.
………..

I pulled my sandwich out of the vinyl bag that had housed my lunch for the past week. As I was about to take a bite, a girl came and sat next to me.
“Hey, you’re Manny, right?” I had seen her in a couple of my classes. Her name was Jenny, and she was very outgoing. “Aren’t you in my American Government class?”
“And your biology class.” I hadn’t really gone out of my way to make friends yet. Though I hadn’t worked very hard to establish myself as the creepy loner kid either. I wasn’t about to blow any people who actually wanted to get to know me. “You’re Jenny, right?”
“In the flesh. Do you mind if we eat with you today? All the other tables are full.” I looked around, seeing several empty tables, but decided not to mention it. Shy as I was, I needed any boost that came my way socially.
“Sorry, but you said ‘we?’” As if on cue, 2 other people dropped their trays across from us and sat down.
“Manny, this is Fern, and Ben.” Fern was in a few more of my classes. She was very pretty, and flashed a brilliant smile. She was pretty quiet in class. I wondered how she was with her friends. Ben wasn’t in any of my classes, and I was pretty sure he was a grade below us. He stuck out his hand.
“Nice to meet you. Aren’t you that new guy who moved here from Spain?” I shook his hand, slightly surprised that anything about me had gotten around the school this quickly. I hadn’t exactly been verbose about where I came from. But it seemed to be a pretty significant point of interest to everyone.
“Yes. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiled, and started tearing into his food. I glanced quickly at Fern, and took a bite of my sandwich.
“So tell us about Spain.” Jenny seemed determined to make me talk about myself. I quickly swallowed my bite of food.
“There’s not a lot to talk about. It’s a beautiful place, especially in Toledo, where I lived. There’s a lot less rain than there is here.” I took another bite. Fern finally spoke up.
“I hear there’s a lot of bullfighting around Toledo.” A sudden terror started building in my chest. PLEASE don’t go there. Fern must have seen something in my eyes, because she looked away, and fell silent. Too bad Ben wasn’t as observant.
“Sweet! Bullfighting!” He looked pretty excited. “Did you ever see any toreadors get gored or trampled?” He went there. Why does humanity hold such a sick passion for violence? I tried to think of something to say that might turn the conversation around. Before I could pull anything out, I felt that shameful seizing up in the back of my throat, and a burning started to crawl up my sinuses to the corners of my eyes. No way was I about to blubber like a baby in this place, in front of these people who I barely knew. I got up suddenly, grabbing my lunch sack and book bag.
“Sorry!” That was all I managed to squeeze from my mouth before I was gone. I went to the nurse, still battling myself, refusing to let the tears come. I must have looked pretty bad, because she gave me a pass to sign out and go home. As soon as I had slumped behind the wheel of the Honda Civic my grandparents let me drive, all the thoughts and emotions that had begun welling up in the cafeteria escaped. Sobs silently wheezed from my lungs, and tears coldly trickled down my face. I managed to regain some control, and drove home. I stumbled to my room, ignoring my grandmother’s surprised hello, and collapsed on my bed. Surprisingly, now that I was alone, I didn’t cry. A deep, throbbing ache had settled like pneumonia into my lower chest. I felt bad for a moment, leaving Jenny and Ben, and Fern so suddenly. A powerful wave of homesickness pounded into me. More than home, more than the sun of Toledo, the clear skies and my old friends, I wanted Papa. I had completely forgotten about the visit of my father nearly a week before. I stood, and noticed the cleaning kit I had been too lazy to pick up since that night. I picked it up, and pulled my father’s sword out from under the bed where I had hidden it, afraid my grandmother might come in to clean and take it away. Gingerly, I pulled off the scabbard. I began to clean it, and as the biting tang of metal polish filled my nostrils, the memory of that night flooded back to my mind.
“You aren’t going to make any friends if you keep running like that.” Almost as if the memory had brought him, my father was sitting by my side, nonchalantly watching the cloth in my hand slide up the blade.
“Papa?” I briefly wondered if I was going crazy, and then decided not to care. He was here with me, and it didn’t matter to me if schizophrenia was what had brought him. The ache in my chest was suddenly gone. “I wasn’t about to cry at school, in front of people who I barely know.”
“You can’t blame a boy for being curious. He was just trying to have a conversation.” He hand gripped my shoulder softly. “You are Spanish, Manny. You cannot hide that, and the world knows what Spain is. They can see who you are.”
“Maybe I need that part of me to go away for a while. Bullfighting stole you from me.” The ache started to settle back in.
“Manny.” I heard the love in his voice. His hand found mine. “I will always be with you. But you need more than me. You need your mother. You need your grandparents. And you desperately need friends. Let them help you.” His hand let go of mine, and he pulled me into an embrace. I closed my eyes, trying to freeze time, trying to lose myself in his embrace. When I opened them again, I was the only person in the room. But I knew I wasn’t alone.
………………..
“You two can leave early today.” Our boss at the library smiled at Fern and I. “We’re pretty much done for the day. I can handle locking up.” Marge was one of the coolest people I knew. She was a lit major at the university, and mildly crazy. She was about five feet tall, and made up for every inch she lacked with an exuberance and passion for life. She had helped Fern and I get our jobs at the library, and we often spent the long, generally empty hours discussing her favorite books with her. Fern and I were currently in AP Lit, and her deep grasp of many of the books we had to read had saved our grades more than once.
“Thanks Marge!” I grabbed our coats, and handed Fern hers. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stick around? You could get attacked or something all alone here.” I was only half joking.
“Because I’ve got so much to get attacked for.” Marge’s sarcasm was unmistakable. “You crazy Spaniards and your misguided attempts at chauvalry.” Marge was big into women’s liberation, despite my constant reminding her that it was pretty much over. She constantly teased me about my “gentleman’s attitude” toward women, saying that chivalry and chauvinism were only different by a few degrees, hence her term chauvalry. Not wanting to lose an opportunity to get home early, Fern decided to chime in.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Marge!” She turned to me. “Manny, do you think you could give me a ride home?” As if I could tell her no.
“Of course!” I pulled her hood over her eyes, and ran off. “Race you to the car!” I beat her by a good four seconds.
“You cheated!” Fern playfully hit my arm, and got in the passenger seat. We talked casually as I drove to her house. In the year since my move here, Ben and Jenny and Fern had become my best friends. After that fateful first lunch, I told them about my father, and Ben had been completely mortified. It took him another couple of weeks to quit apologizing. As the year progressed, we grew closer and closer. Fern and I had gotten our jobs at the library together, with the help of Marge, who we had taken to the moment she interviewed us. After I dropped Fern off, I headed home, thinking how well my life was going, and how lucky I was to have the friends I did.
My mom is a reporter for the Seattle Times. Since news was kind of her thing, it was fitting that she was the one who broke it to me that night. I was watching Wheel of Fortune with my grandparents when she came in.
“Manny, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” No greeting, no hug. I knew something was up. I wondered briefly if she had found out about Ben and me spinning cookies in a church parking lot last weekend, then dismissed it. Mom wouldn’t really care about that kind of thing unless someone got hurt, which no one had. I got up and went into the kitchen warily.
“What’s going on, Mom?” I was trying to read her face. I wasn’t enjoying its story.
“I’m sorry Manny. It’s about Marge.” A cold feeling started to spread like a fog inside my chest. “She was mugged a couple of hours ago, and she was shot three times.” The freezing sensation immediately took over my body completely.
“Is she…is she-” I stopped, and tried to catch my breath. I couldn’t force that little word out of my mouth. Luckily my ever perceptive mother caught it.
“She’s not dead.” She put her arm around my shoulder. Which was hard for her, seeing as she was a good eight inches shorter than me. “She’s in the hospital, in critical condition. They shot her in the lower abdomen and shoulder. No one knows which way she’s going to go yet.” Her arm tightened around my shoulders, and then she pulled me into a hug. “Oh Manny, I’m so sorry. Are you ok?” The cold had turned into a numbness that permeated my head and chest.
“I’m going to go call Fern.” I pulled out of her embrace softly, and took the cordless phone into my room and closed the door. The click of the latch was like a switch being flipped inside myself. It hit me. Marge was hurt, maybe dying or even dead. I barely noticed my thumb, dialing Fern’s number seemingly on its own. I heard one, two, three rings, and then Fern picked up.
“Hello?” Her voice pulled me back into reality.
“Fern? It’s Manny.” I wondered how I could be doing something so ordinary as calling someone on the phone when something so huge was going on. I somehow told Fern what had happened. She cried. Somehow through her tears, we managed to simultaneously plan with each other over the phone and with our parents to skip school the next day to go visit Marge in the hospital. After Fern tearfully hung up on her end, I slumped back onto my bed and let the numbness that had been drifting through my body engulf my mind, and fell asleep. The phone awakened me the next day. I groggily picked up, still semi-conscious.
“Hello?” My voice was covered in the layer of gravel that is always present after directly waking up. Fern’s voice jolted my foggy brain completely alert.
“Manny?” Her voice was still a little shaky, and the memory of what had transpired the night before suddenly crashed back into my head. “I called the hospital. They said that Marge is still unconscious, but if we still want to visit her, their visiting hours are from one until six in the evening.” I glanced at my alarm clock. It was nine o’clock now.
“Why don’t I pick you up at around noon, and we can get some lunch and maybe pick up some flowers or something before we head up to the hospital.” Our parents had agreed the night before to call us both in sick, so school wasn’t an issue at the moment. She agreed, and we hung up. My mom was at the newspaper office, my grandfather at his law firm. Grandma had left me a note, saying that she had gone out to run some errands and would be back around two o’clock. After a shower and some cereal that may well have been cat food (I wasn’t paying real close attention to what I was doing. Mostly I was just following routine since I had nothing else to do), I tried to watch some television until it was time to go. Mostly I just sat numbly on the couch, wondering if Marge would be alright.
I picked Fern up a little after twelve o’clock.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” I knew neither of us was really hungry, but it gave me something to say.
“I don’t know.” Fern wasn’t crying, but her voice reflected the emptiness I was feeling. We spent a few minutes driving around, having a hollow conversation where we argued who had to decide where to eat. Eventually we just decided to stop at the next place we saw. Which turned out to be an Arby’s. We ordered our food, and ate it silently. It wasn’t a painful silence, but it felt necessary. Neither of us had anything really to say. What did the issues of teenage life matter when the life of someone we both loved was possibly about to expire? I didn’t taste anything I ate this time either. After lunch, we went to the florist and bought a bouquet of carnations, which we knew were Marge’s favorites. We had gotten her some for her birthday too.
The hospital was bursting with the typical medical feeling. A hushed up feeling, like it’s a crime to whisper, mixed with the clean yet nauseating perfume of disinfectant. We looked up Marge’s room number at the front desk. She was on the third floor. The elevator was leaking out some fuzzy muzak, but I couldn’t tell what tune. Suddenly I was off the elevator and we were standing at Marge’s bedside. Her face was pale, and completely still. If I hadn’t heard the faint but constant beep…beep…beep…of her heart-rate monitor, I would have thought she was dead. I felt Fern’s cool, dry hand slip into mine.
“How can someone who’s so full of life look so quiet?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut into my ears like a gunshot. I searched around my head desperately for something to say to comfort her.
“This sucks.” Classic me. So tactful. Even as I was yelling at myself mentally, I heard words passing out of my mouth. “Why did this have to happen to someone so kind?” Suddenly I was out of words. Fern’s grip tightened on my had, and I felt her shaking as she silently cried. I felt that familiar tightness in my throat, but I didn’t care this time. I wasn’t going to fall apart. Even as the thought tumbled through my mind, I felt a tear escape the corner of my eye. Memories of work started flooding through my head, and I suddenly recalled the night before, vividly as if I was back there, living it again. Shame and anger filled me. This was MY FAULT! I hadn’t stayed to help Marge, I had left her alone, and she had been attacked. She had been robbed and shot because she was alone. And I should have stayed the full shift, instead of selfishly leaving early. Fern and I sat there, me steaming away at myself, filling with shame and anger, she crying openly, but quietly, simply holding my hand. I wanted to pull her to me, to hug her tightly and comfort her, but I couldn’t. After a year, or just an hour, or even thirty seconds, we got up, Fern bending over to kiss Marge on her frozen cheek, and left. The car ride home was as silent as the ride to the hospital. When I dropped Fern off, I walked her to her door. She hugged me there, tightly.
“Thanks Manny.” A whisper, straight into my ear but still so soft it was barely audible. Her face was dry now, but her eyes were red and puffy. And beautiful
“No thanks needed, Fern.” There I was, typical stoic male, refusing to show the slightest emotion despite the fact that inside I was still raging at myself for leaving Marge alone. We let go of each other, and she went inside.
As soon as I got home, I went up to m room. My grandmother was still gone. I fell back onto my bed and cried for real. Marge was maybe dying. She was definitely hurt. And it was all my fault. MY FAULT! I slowly started slipping off the bed until I was lying flat on the floor. I opened my eyes and say my father’s sword and its cleaning kit hiding under the bed, right where I had left them almost a year ago. I pulled them out, and soon had fallen into the comforting and nearly hypnotic rhythm of polishing the blade, trying to lose myself just for a little while in the old habit, inhaling the tang of the polish like it was the greatest scent in the world.
“You know you almost look like a junkie getting his fix.” I started, and was almost surprised to see my father sitting beside me again for the first time in almost a year. He looked amused at my expression. “Yes, I’m here again. Wanna tell me what’s upsetting you?”
“My boss, Marge.” My throat was coated with a film left by the crying. “She was shot last night and is critical in the hospital.”
“Sounds bad.” Truly my father, saying so much with so few words. “Think she’ll be all-right?” I drew a short, shuddering breath.
“I hope so Dad.” I balanced for a second between whether I should explain my shame to him or not. I think he caught something in my face.
“Something more you need to say, hombre?” He looked questioningly into my eyes, and I made up my mind.
“Dad, it was my fault.” The words burned my tongue as I spat them out. Dad looked at me, but I couldn’t read his expression. Shameful tears started to slip down my cheeks. “I left her alone, even though I knew this could happen.”
“Manny, Manny, Manny.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “How dangerous is bullfighting?” What kind of question was that?
“Deadly. You know that better than anyone.” Images of that awful bullfight started flashing though my head again.
“Then why did we do it?” Maybe it wasn’t disappointment I was hearing his voice.
“I don’t know anymore.” It was true. “Ever since you died, I asked myself over and over again how we could have thought such a dangerous and barbaric sport was okay. It killed you!”
“Manny. You know exactly why. The rush, the glory of a fight well done, the thrill of having brushed so close to death, the adoration of the fans.” I could feel the nostalgia in his voice starting to infect me. “It was part of Spain, Part of who we were, and it brought us closer to each other.”
“What the hell does that have to do with Marge?” I was getting annoyed, and I couldn’t tell why.
“Manny, everyone takes risks. Every time you drive a car, or even just walk down the street, there’s a chance something could happen.” I started to catch what he was trying so hard to tell me. “Risks are part of life. Getting hurt is part of life. Dying is part of life. And no matter how hard we try, we can’t save everyone. It’s not our fault, and Marge wasn’t your fault.” Okay, maybe he had a point. But I still killed you, Dad. He looked up sharply at me, as if he’d caught the thought. “Manny, you don’t think my death was your fault too, after all this time?”
“It is, Dad.” In a flash I was back in those horrific moments before my father had died. The bull’s hooves flashed, and a rock was suddenly flying straight at me. I didn’t have time to react, and instantly there was a blinding pain shooting through the left side of my face. I cried out, and saw my father turn towards me, distracted. The bulls’ horns caught him in the ribs, and he was flat on his back, at the mercy of those deadly, cruel hooves.
“Manny, Manny!” My dad was shaking me, pulling me out of the nightmare again. I gasped, and sobs began to wrack my body.
. “I killed you, I didn’t duck, I couldn’t control myself and I shouted, I distracted you…” I was babbling, trying to finally tell him how I’d killed him! Dad shushed me.
“Manny, you and I both knew the risks I took every time I entered that ring. I made my peace with man and God before I went into every match. I made sure I was ready to die, in case I actually did.” He took my cold, clammy, guilty hand in his own warm dry one. “I knew the risks, and you and your mother knew them as well. Dying never really concerned me as much as what would have happened to you if something had happened to me. When you were hit by that rock, I couldn’t ignore it. I saw it happen even before you cried out.” He squeezed my hand. “You were my sword page, and more than that, you were, are my son. That rock hitting you was not what killed me, Manny. The bull, and my own lack of concentration caused my death. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t mine or even the bull’s. The fault was nobody’s but mine for ever choosing and accepting the enormous possibility of death when I took up bullfighting. Please, Manny. I’m not going to be able to rest and move on as long as I can see you ripping yourself apart for my death.” He tilted my head so I was staring into his eyes. “It was not your fault.” And I saw the truth in his eyes. Something opened inside my chest, and new tears started falling from my eyes.
“Thank you, Padre.” A whisper was all I could force past my lips. He pulled me into an embrace, and I held him tightly, crying, not from sorrow, but from the sense of freedom that had suddenly dropped onto me. We held each other for what seemed like hours. When I finally let go, he was gone. I sat on my bed, feeling my father’s lingering presence and love that was hanging in the air of my room like a fog. The phone rang suddenly, and I picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi Manny.” The soft voice thundered out of the phone. It was Marge.

End

My Father's Sword almost done, I swear

My Father’s Sword
Those hooves, those hammering, ruthless hooves pounding down, down, down. I cursed the dust clogging the air, hiding everything but those hooves and the occasional flash of color from a glimpse of my father’s costume. A pulsing heat was invading the left side of my face, casting a blurred shine to everything I saw. I was running, calls of warning missing my ears completely. I was wrapped in a silence punctured only by the frenzied tattoo of my own heartbeat. I reached my father just as the handlers got the bull penned. His body was surprisingly straight, lying still on the ground. His cape was lying twenty feet away in a crumpled heap. I knelt and gripped his hand, staring, my eyes desperately trying to suck a sign of movement from his chest. His mouth twitched, and a whisper pierced the deafening drumbeat flooding my head.
“Manny.” My name, gurgled past his lips. I leaned in closer. “I love you.”
“Papa, don’t go! Please-” Another thundering whisper cut me off.
“Please, son. Just listen. Take care of your mother. Treat her like the goddess she is.” A rivulet of blood crawled out of the corner of his mouth. “Remember to live with passion, as I taught you. We are Spain.” He coughed, sending another crimson snake slithering out of the other side of his mouth. “I will always be with you.” The medics were there, trying to take my father from me, trying to pull his hand from mine. I couldn’t let go. It took three men to pull me away from my father. I didn’t scream. Not with my mouth. I just stood there, listening to the agonized, tortured symphony pouring from my heart, the blood of my shattered soul leaking from the corners of my eyes. The hilt of my father’s sword was burning in my other hand, welding itself to my fist.
That was when I woke up. I didn’t wake up suddenly, or all at once. Tears were still slipping down my face as I crawled out of slumber. Every night I had gone back. Every night, I was back to that moment. Stuck, reliving those infinitely long seconds when my father had been ripped from my life. The scar on my face was burning as though it had reopened, and I brushed it with my fingertips, a raised pink line sitting on my cheekbone. I didn’t need to look at the clock. I knew I had awakened at the same time as every night before, and that there were still a good 4 hours before daylight would even consider oozing over the horizon. I turned over in my bed, not wanting to let sleep steal me back. I started school tomorrow, and I knew that I needed rest. But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my eyes. I sat up and turned on my lamp. Reaching into the gap between my bed and the wall, I pulled it out. It had become part of me in those moments when I watched the EMT’s covering my father on the stretcher and hoisting him into the ambulance, the white and red hearse that drove my father away. I pulled it out of the scabbard, staring at the light that danced along its edge. I pulled off my covers, and got up. An idea had struck me, and I started rummaging through one of the many unpacked boxes sitting of the floor of my room. I found what I was looking for, and sat on the edge of my bed.
As I opened the cleaning kit, I thought back to when Papa and I used to clean his sword, both before and after his fights. We talked about everything, school, sports, especially bullfighting, and simply about life in general. It was a time when just the two of us were together, and we weren’t just father and son. During those times, we were friends and equals. I would tell him about girls at school, or things that bothered me, and he would tell me about work, stories about when he was my age, and about things he and Mom did when they were younger. I started running the oiled cloth over the blade, and a few leftover tears began to leak out again. One landed on the handle, but I ignored it.
“You know, saltwater isn’t good for the blade.” I looked up, startled. “Over here, son.” I looked at the end of my bed, and saw my father, sitting there in his matador costume, clean and whole, but still surrounded by that shiny blur he had had when I held him in the ring.
“Papa?” I decided that I was in a new dream, and hoped that this one wouldn’t turn into another nightmare. “You’re gone Papa. What are you doing here?”
“Obviously you need me more now than heaven does.” His reply was soft and warm, but tinged slightly with a wistfulness that I understood more deeply than anything I had before.
“You’re not real, are you?” It wasn’t completely a question, but not a statement either.
“It doesn’t matter whether I am or not. You need me, and I told you I’d always be with you.” He came over closer to me. “I’m not a ghost, or an angel really. Now what’s going on?”
“I can’t sleep, Dad.” I kept cleaning the sword as I spoke, and it was just like it used to be. “I keep seeing you die, over and over. I miss you.” The tears threatened to return, but I kept them dammed.
“Did I ever tell you about the day my father died?” He hadn’t, and I realized then that he had only been a few years older than I was now when Grandfather and been gored to death. “I wasn’t there, because I was resting from a fight I had just finished. I rushed out, and rode with the ambulance that took him to the hospital. I kept wondering, asking myself, why couldn’t I have stopped it.”
“Dad, you weren’t even near him or the bull. There was nothing you could have done.” And it was my fault in the first place that you fell. If I hadn’t gotten hit by that rock…
“Manny, I know that. But grief does things. For weeks, I blamed myself, dumb though it was. I kept seeing him under the bull, or gored by the bull, or lying broken on the field. I told myself, if only I’d been there, if I’d been one of his lancers. It was his only match that I’d missed, and all because I was too damn tired to go watch it.”
“Dad? Do you still think it was your fault?” Because it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t gotten hurt and made his father turn away from the bull, hadn’t made him trip and get trampled and trampled, and trampled…I had finished cleaning the sword, and was sliding it back into its sheath as sobs vibrated my body. I couldn’t look at my father. Suddenly I felt his hand on my head.
“Manny, you have school tomorrow. You need to sleep.” I felt him gently pull back my covers, and I laid down. The blankets slid over me, and I heard his voice, softly singing an old Spanish lullaby that he had sung me to sleep with until I was seven years old. The last thing I felt before I dozed off was his kiss on my head. I wasn’t crying anymore.
………..

I pulled my sandwich out of the vinyl bag that had housed my lunch for the past week. As I was about to take a bite, a girl came and sat next to me.
“Hey, you’re Manny, right?” I had seen her in a couple of my classes. Her name was Jenny, and she was very outgoing. “Aren’t you in my American Government class?”
“And your biology class.” I hadn’t really gone out of my way to make friends yet. Though I hadn’t worked very hard to establish myself as the creepy loner kid either. I wasn’t about to blow any people who actually wanted to get to know me. “You’re Jenny, right?”
“In the flesh. Do you mind if we eat with you today? All the other tables are full.” I looked around, seeing several empty tables, but decided not to mention it. Shy as I was, I needed any boost that came my way socially.
“Sorry, but you said ‘we?’” As if on cue, 2 other people dropped their trays across from us and sat down.
“Manny, this is Fern, and Ben.” Fern was in a few more of my classes. She was very pretty, and flashed a brilliant smile. She was pretty quiet in class. I wondered how she was with her friends. Ben wasn’t in any of my classes, and I was pretty sure he was a grade below us. He stuck out his hand.
“Nice to meet you. Aren’t you that new guy who moved here from Spain?” I shook his hand, slightly surprised that anything about me had gotten around the school this quickly. I hadn’t exactly been verbose about where I came from. But it seemed to be a pretty significant point of interest to everyone.
“Yes. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiled, and started tearing into his food. I glanced quickly at Fern, and took a bite of my sandwich.
“So tell us about Spain.” Jenny seemed determined to make me talk about myself. I quickly swallowed my bite of food.
“There’s not a lot to talk about. It’s a beautiful place, especially in Toledo, where I lived. There’s a lot less rain than there is here.” I took another bite. Fern finally spoke up.
“I hear there’s a lot of bullfighting around Toledo.” A sudden terror started building in my chest. PLEASE don’t go there. Fern must have seen something in my eyes, because she looked away, and fell silent. Too bad Ben wasn’t as observant.
“Sweet! Bullfighting!” He looked pretty excited. “Did you ever see any toreadors get gored or trampled?” He went there. Why does humanity hold such a sick passion for violence? I tried to think of something to say that might turn the conversation around. Before I could pull anything out, I felt that shameful seizing up in the back of my throat, and a burning started to crawl up my sinuses to the corners of my eyes. No way was I about to blubber like a baby in this place, in front of these people who I barely knew. I got up suddenly, grabbing my lunch sack and book bag.
“Sorry!” That was all I managed to squeeze from my mouth before I was gone. I went to the nurse, still battling myself, refusing to let the tears come. I must have looked pretty bad, because she gave me a pass to sign out and go home. As soon as I had slumped behind the wheel of the Honda Civic my grandparents let me drive, all the thoughts and emotions that had begun welling up in the cafeteria escaped. Sobs silently wheezed from my lungs, and tears coldly trickled down my face. I managed to regain some control, and drove home. I stumbled to my room, ignoring my grandmother’s surprised hello, and collapsed on my bed. Surprisingly, now that I was alone, I didn’t cry. A deep, throbbing ache had settled like pneumonia into my lower chest. I felt bad for a moment, leaving Jenny and Ben, and Fern so suddenly. A powerful wave of homesickness pounded into me. More than home, more than the sun of Toledo, the clear skies and my old friends, I wanted Papa. I had completely forgotten about the visit of my father nearly a week before. I stood, and noticed the cleaning kit I had been too lazy to pick up since that night. I picked it up, and pulled my father’s sword out from under the bed where I had hidden it, afraid my grandmother might come in to clean and take it away. Gingerly, I pulled off the scabbard. I began to clean it, and as the biting tang of metal polish filled my nostrils, the memory of that night flooded back to my mind.
“You aren’t going to make any friends if you keep running like that.” Almost as if the memory had brought him, my father was sitting by my side, nonchalantly watching the cloth in my hand slide up the blade.
“Papa?” I briefly wondered if I was going crazy, and then decided not to care. He was here with me, and it didn’t matter to me if schizophrenia was what had brought him. The ache in my chest was suddenly gone. “I wasn’t about to cry at school, in front of people who I barely know.”
“You can’t blame a boy for being curious. He was just trying to have a conversation.” He hand gripped my shoulder softly. “You are Spanish, Manny. You cannot hide that, and the world knows what Spain is. They can see who you are.”
“Maybe I need that part of me to go away for a while. Bullfighting stole you from me.” The ache started to settle back in.
“Manny.” I heard the love in his voice. His hand found mine. “I will always be with you. But you need more than me. You need your mother. You need your grandparents. And you desperately need friends. Let them help you.” His hand let go of mine, and he pulled me into an embrace. I closed my eyes, trying to freeze time, trying to lose myself in his embrace. When I opened them again, I was the only person in the room. But I knew I wasn’t alone.
………………..
“You two can leave early today.” Our boss at the library smiled at Fern and I. “We’re pretty much done for the day. I can handle locking up.” Marge was one of the coolest people I knew. She was a lit major at the university, and mildly crazy. She was about five feet tall, and made up for every inch she lacked with an exuberance and passion for life. She had helped Fern and I get our jobs at the library, and we often spent the long, generally empty hours discussing her favorite books with her. Fern and I were currently in AP Lit, and her deep grasp of many of the books we had to read had saved our grades more than once.
“Thanks Marge!” I grabbed our coats, and handed Fern hers. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stick around? You could get attacked or something all alone here.” I was only half joking.
“Because I’ve got so much to get attacked for.” Marge’s sarcasm was unmistakable. “You crazy Spaniards and your misguided attempts at chauvalry.” Marge was big into women’s liberation, despite my constant reminding her that it was pretty much over. She constantly teased me about my “gentleman’s attitude” toward women, saying that chivalry and chauvinism were only different by a few degrees, hence her term chauvalry. Not wanting to lose an opportunity to get home early, Fern decided to chime in.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Marge!” She turned to me. “Manny, do you think you could give me a ride home?” As if I could tell her no.
“Of course!” I pulled her hood over her eyes, and ran off. “Race you to the car!” I beat her by a good four seconds.
“You cheated!” Fern playfully hit my arm, and got in the passenger seat. We talked casually as I drove to her house. In the year since my move here, Ben and Jenny and Fern had become my best friends. After that fateful first lunch, I told them about my father, and Ben had been completely mortified. It took him another couple of weeks to quit apologizing. As the year progressed, we grew closer and closer. Fern and I had gotten our jobs at the library together, with the help of Marge, who we had taken to the moment she interviewed us. After I dropped Fern off, I headed home, thinking how well my life was going, and how lucky I was to have the friends I did.
My mom is a reporter for the Seattle Times. Since news was kind of her thing, it was fitting that she was the one who broke it to me that night. I was watching Wheel of Fortune with my grandparents when she came in.
“Manny, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” No greeting, no hug. I knew something was up. I wondered briefly if she had found out about Ben and me spinning cookies in a church parking lot last weekend, then dismissed it. Mom wouldn’t really care about that kind of thing unless someone got hurt, which no one had. I got up and went into the kitchen warily.
“What’s going on, Mom?” I was trying to read her face. I wasn’t enjoying its story.
“I’m sorry Manny. It’s about Marge.” A cold feeling started to spread like a fog inside my chest. “She was mugged a couple of hours ago, and she was shot three times.” The freezing sensation immediately took over my body completely.
“Is she…is she-” I stopped, and tried to catch my breath. I couldn’t force that little word out of my mouth. Luckily my ever perceptive mother caught it.
“She’s not dead.” She put her arm around my shoulder. Which was hard for her, seeing as she was a good eight inches shorter than me. “She’s in the hospital, in critical condition. They shot her in the lower abdomen and shoulder. No one knows which way she’s going to go yet.” Her arm tightened around my shoulders, and then she pulled me into a hug. “Oh Manny, I’m so sorry. Are you ok?” The cold had turned into a numbness that permeated my head and chest.
“I’m going to go call Fern.” I pulled out of her embrace softly, and took the cordless phone into my room and closed the door. The click of the latch was like a switch being flipped inside myself. It hit me. Marge was hurt, maybe dying or even dead. I barely noticed my thumb, dialing Fern’s number seemingly on its own. I heard one, two, three rings, and then Fern picked up.
“Hello?” Her voice pulled me back into reality.
“Fern? It’s Manny.” I wondered how I could be doing something so ordinary as calling someone on the phone when something so huge was going on. I somehow told Fern what had happened. She cried. Somehow through her tears, we managed to simultaneously plan with each other over the phone and with our parents to skip school the next day to go visit Marge in the hospital. After Fern tearfully hung up on her end, I slumped back onto my bed and let the numbness that had been drifting through my body engulf my mind, and fell asleep. The phone awakened me the next day. I groggily picked up, still semi-conscious.
“Hello?” My voice was covered in the layer of gravel that is always present after directly waking up. Fern’s voice jolted my foggy brain completely alert.
“Manny?” Her voice was still a little shaky, and the memory of what had transpired the night before suddenly crashed back into my head. “I called the hospital. They said that Marge is still unconscious, but if we still want to visit her, their visiting hours are from one until six in the evening.” I glanced at my alarm clock. It was nine o’clock now.
“Why don’t I pick you up at around noon, and we can get some lunch and maybe pick up some flowers or something before we head up to the hospital.” Our parents had agreed the night before to call us both in sick, so school wasn’t an issue at the moment. She agreed, and we hung up. My mom was at the newspaper office, my grandfather at his law firm. Grandma had left me a note, saying that she had gone out to run some errands and would be back around two o’clock. After a shower and some cereal that may well have been cat food (I wasn’t paying real close attention to what I was doing. Mostly I was just following routine since I had nothing else to do), I tried to watch some television until it was time to go. Mostly I just sat numbly on the couch, wondering if Marge would be alright.
I picked Fern up a little after twelve o’clock.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” I knew neither of us was really hungry, but it gave me something to say.
“I don’t know.” Fern wasn’t crying, but her voice reflected the emptiness I was feeling. We spent a few minutes driving around, having a hollow conversation where we argued who had to decide where to eat. Eventually we just decided to stop at the next place we saw. Which turned out to be an Arby’s. We ordered our food, and ate it silently. It wasn’t a painful silence, but it felt necessary. Neither of us had anything really to say. What did the issues of teenage life matter when the life of someone we both loved was possibly about to expire? I didn’t taste anything I ate this time either. After lunch, we went to the florist and bought a bouquet of carnations, which we knew were Marge’s favorites. We had gotten her some for her birthday too.
The hospital was bursting with the typical medical feeling. A hushed up feeling, like it’s a crime to whisper, mixed with the clean yet nauseating perfume of disinfectant. We looked up Marge’s room number at the front desk. She was on the third floor. The elevator was leaking out some fuzzy muzak, but I couldn’t tell what tune. Suddenly I was off the elevator and we were standing at Marge’s bedside. Her face was pale, and completely still. If I hadn’t heard the faint but constant beep…beep…beep…of her heart-rate monitor, I would have thought she was dead. I felt Fern’s cool, dry hand slip into mine.
“How can someone who’s so full of life look so quiet?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut into my ears like a gunshot. I searched around my head desperately for something to say to comfort her.
“This sucks.” Classic me. So tactful. Even as I was yelling at myself mentally, I heard words passing out of my mouth. “Why did this have to happen to someone so kind?” Suddenly I was out of words. Fern’s grip tightened on my had, and I felt her shaking as she silently cried. I felt that familiar tightness in my throat, but I didn’t care this time. I wasn’t going to fall apart. Even as the thought tumbled through my mind, I felt a tear escape the corner of my eye. Memories of work started flooding through my head, and I suddenly recalled the night before, vividly as if I was back there, living it again. Shame and anger filled me. This was MY FAULT! I hadn’t stayed to help Marge, I had left her alone, and she had been attacked. She had been robbed and shot because she was alone. And I should have stayed the full shift, instead of selfishly leaving early. Fern and I sat there, me steaming away at myself, filling with shame and anger, she crying openly, but quietly, simply holding my hand. I wanted to pull her to me, to hug her tightly and comfort her, but I couldn’t. After a year, or just an hour, or even thirty seconds, we got up, Fern bending over to kiss Marge on her frozen cheek, and left. The car ride home was as silent as the ride to the hospital. When I dropped Fern off, I walked her to her door. She hugged me there, tightly.
“Thanks Manny.” A whisper, straight into my ear but still so soft it was barely audible. Her face was dry now, but her eyes were red and puffy. And beautiful
“No thanks needed, Fern.” There I was, typical stoic male, refusing to show the slightest emotion despite the fact that inside I was still raging at myself for leaving Marge alone. We let go of each other, and she went inside.
As soon as I got home, I went up to m room. My grandmother was still gone. I fell back onto my bed and cried for real. Marge was maybe dying. She was definitely hurt. And it was all my fault. MY FAULT! I slowly started slipping off the bed until I was lying flat on the floor. I opened my eyes and say my father’s sword and its cleaning kit hiding under the bed, right where I had left them almost a year ago. I pulled them out, and soon had fallen into the comforting and nearly hypnotic rhythm of polishing the blade, trying to lose myself just for a little while in the old habit, inhaling the tang of the polish like it was the greatest scent in the world.
“You know you almost look like a junkie getting his fix.” I started, and was almost surprised to see my father sitting beside me again for the first time in almost a year. He looked amused at my expression. “Yes, I’m here again. Wanna tell me what’s upsetting you?”
“My boss, Marge.” My throat was coated with a film left by the crying. “She was shot last night and is critical in the hospital.”
“Sounds bad.” Truly my father, saying so much with so few words. “Think she’ll be all-right?” I drew a short, shuddering breath.
“I hope so Dad.” I Balanced for a second between whether I should explain my shame to him or not. I think he caught something in my face.
“Something more you need to say, hombre?” He looked questioningly into my eyes, and I made up my mind.
“Dad, it was my fault.” The words burned my tongue as I spat them out. Dad looked

My Father's Sword (again)

I've been working on thing for more than a week, and now I've got block I know what's got to happen, I just can't write it out yet. So here's the latest, reworked edition. I've got a new set of lyrics for a song brewing upstairs too. It's called Waiting to broken. But at the moment I don't know if I'll ever get that out either. I still need more feedback on what I have so far. Thanks!

My Father’s Sword

Those hooves, those ruthless, hammering hooves pounding down, down, down. I cursed the dust clogging the air, hiding everything but those hooves and the occasional flash of color from a glimpse of my father’s costume. A pulsing heat was invading the left side of my face, casting a blurred shine to everything I saw. I was running, calls of warning missing my ears completely. I was wrapped in a silence punctured only by the frenzied tattoo of my own heartbeat. I reached my father just as the handlers got the bull penned. His body was surprisingly straight, lying still on the ground. His cape was lying twenty feet away in a crumpled heap. I knelt and gripped his hand, staring, my eyes desperately trying to suck a sign of movement from his chest. His mouth twitched, and a whisper pierced the deafening drumbeat flooding my head.
“Manny.” My name, gurgled past his lips. I leaned in closer. “I love you.”
“Papa, don’t go! Please-” Another thundering whisper cut me off.
“Please, son. Just listen. Take care of your mother. Treat her like the goddess she is.” A rivulet of blood crawled out of the corner of his mouth. “Remember to live with passion, as I taught you. We are Spain.” He coughed, sending another crimson snake slithering out of the other side of his mouth. “I will always be with you.” The medics were there, trying to take my father from me, trying to pull his hand from mine. I couldn’t let go. It took three men to pull me away from my father. I didn’t scream. Not with my mouth. I just stood there, listening to the agonized, tortured symphony pouring from my heart, the blood of my shattered soul leaking from the corners of my eyes. The hilt of my father’s sword was burning in my other hand, welding itself to my fist. That was when I woke up. I didn’t wake up suddenly, or all at once. Tears were still slipping down my face as I crawled out of slumber. Every night I had gone back. Every night, I was back to that moment. Stuck, reliving those infinitely long seconds when my father had been ripped from my life. The scar on my face was burning as though it had reopened, and I brushed it with my fingertips, a raised pink line sitting on my cheekbone. I didn’t need to look at the clock. I knew I had awakened at the same time as every night before, and that there were still a good 4 hours before daylight would even consider oozing over the horizon. I turned over in my bed, not wanting to let sleep steal me back. I started school tomorrow, and I knew that I needed rest. But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my eyes. I sat up and turned on my lamp. Reaching into the gap between my bed and the wall, I pulled it out. It had become part of me in those moments when I watched the EMT’s covering my father on the stretcher and hoisting him into the ambulance, the white and red hearse that drove my father away. I pulled it out of the scabbard, staring at the light that danced along its edge. I pulled off my covers, and got up. An idea had struck me, and I started rummaging through one of the many unpacked boxes sitting of the floor of my room. I found what I was looking for, and sat on the edge of my bed.
As I opened the cleaning kit, I thought back to when Papa and I used to clean his sword, both before and after his fights. We talked about everything, school, sports, especially bullfighting, and simply about life in general. It was a time when just the two of us were together, and we weren’t just father and son. During those times, we were friends and equals. I would tell him about girls at school, or things that bothered me, and he would tell me about work, stories about when he was my age, and about things he and Mom did when they were younger. I started running the oiled cloth over the blade, and a few leftover tears began to leak out again. One landed on the handle, but I ignored it.
“You know, saltwater isn’t good for the blade.” I looked up, startled. “Over here, son.” I looked at the end of my bed, and saw my father, sitting there in his matador costume, clean and whole, but still surrounded by that shiny blur he had had when I held him in the ring.
“Papa?” I decided that I was in a new dream, and hoped that this one wouldn’t turn into another nightmare. “You’re gone Papa. What are you doing here?”
“Obviously you need me more now than heaven does.” His reply was soft and warm, but tinged slightly with a wistfulness that I understood more deeply than anything I had before.
“You’re not real, are you?” It wasn’t completely a question, but not a statement either.
“It doesn’t matter whether I am or not. You need me, and I told you I’d always be with you.” He came over closer to me. “I’m not a ghost, or an angel really. Now what’s going on?”
“I can’t sleep, Dad.” I kept cleaning the sword as I spoke, and it was just like it used to be. “I keep seeing you die, over and over. I miss you.” The tears threatened to return, but I kept them dammed.
“Did I ever tell you about the day my father died?” He hadn’t, and I realized then that he had only been a few years older than I was now when Grandfather and been gored to death. “I wasn’t there, because I was resting from a fight I had just finished. I rushed out, and rode with the ambulance that took him to the hospital. I kept wondering, asking myself, why couldn’t I have stopped it.”
“Dad, you weren’t even near him or the bull. There was nothing you could have done.” And it was my fault in the first place that you fell. If I hadn’t gotten hit by that rock…
“Manny, I know that. But grief does things. For weeks, I blamed myself, dumb though it was. I kept seeing him under the bull, or gored by the bull, or lying broken on the field. I told myself, if only I’d been there, if I’d been one of his lancers. It was his only match that I’d missed, and all because I was too damn tired to go watch it.”
“Dad? Do you still think it was your fault?” Because it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t gotten hurt and made his father turn away from the bull, hadn’t made him trip and get trampled and trampled, and trampled…I had finished cleaning the sword, and was sliding it back into its sheath as sobs vibrated my body. I couldn’t look at my father. Suddenly I felt his hand on my head.
“Manny, you have school tomorrow. You need to sleep.” I felt him gently pull back my covers, and I laid down. The blankets slid over me, and I heard his voice, softly singing an old Spanish lullaby that he had sung me to sleep with until I was seven years old. The last thing I felt before I dozed off was his kiss on my head. I wasn’t crying anymore.
………..

I pulled my sandwich out of the vinyl bag that had housed my lunch for the past week. As I was about to take a bite, a girl came and sat next to me.
“Hey, you’re Manny, right?” I had seen her in a couple of my classes. Her name was Jenny, and she was very outgoing. “Aren’t you in my American Government class?”
“And your biology class.” I hadn’t really gone out of my way to make friends yet. Though I hadn’t worked very hard to establish myself as the creepy loner kid either. I wasn’t about to blow any people who actually wanted to get to know me. “You’re Jenny, right?”
“In the flesh. Do you mind if we eat with you today? All the other tables are full.” I looked around, seeing several empty tables, but decided not to mention it. Shy as I was, I needed any boost that came my way socially.
“Sorry, but you said ‘we?’” As if on cue, 2 other people dropped their trays across from us and sat down.
“Manny, this is Fern, and Ben.” Fern was in a few more of my classes. She was very pretty, and flashed a brilliant smile. She was pretty quiet in class. I wondered how she was with her friends. Ben wasn’t in any of my classes, and I was pretty sure he was a grade below us. He stuck out his hand.
“Nice to meet you. Aren’t you that new guy who moved here from Spain?” I shook his hand, slightly surprised that anything about me had gotten around the school this quickly. I hadn’t exactly been verbose about where I came from. But it seemed to be a pretty significant point of interest to everyone.
“Yes. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiled, and started tearing into his food. I glanced quickly at Fern, and took a bite of my sandwich.
“So tell us about Spain.” Jenny seemed determined to make me talk about myself. I quickly swallowed my bite of food.
“There’s not a lot to talk about. It’s a beautiful place, especially in Toledo, where I lived. There’s a lot less rain than there is here.” I took another bite. Fern finally spoke up.
“I hear there’s a lot of bullfighting around Toledo.” A sudden terror started building in my chest. PLEASE don’t go there. Fern must have seen something in my eyes, because she looked away, and fell silent. Too bad Ben wasn’t as observant.
“Sweet! Bullfighting!” He looked pretty excited. “Did you ever see any toreadors get gored or trampled?” He went there. Why does humanity hold such a sick passion for violence? I tried to think of something to say that might turn the conversation around. Before I could pull anything out, I felt that shameful seizing up in the back of my throat, and a burning started to crawl up my sinuses to the corners of my eyes. I got up suddenly, grabbing my lunch sack and book bag.
“Sorry!” That was all I managed to squeeze from my mouth before I was gone. I went to the nurse, still battling myself, refusing to let the tears come. I must have looked pretty bad, because she gave me a pass to sign out and go home. As soon as I had slumped behind the wheel of the Honda Civic my grandparents let me drive, all the thoughts and emotions that had begun welling up in the cafeteria escaped. Sobs silently wheezed from my lungs, and tears coldly trickled down my face. I managed to regain some control, and drove home. I stumbled to my room, ignoring my grandmother’s surprised hello, and collapsed on my bed. Surprisingly, now that I was alone, I didn’t cry. A deep, throbbing ache had settled like pneumonia into my lower chest. I felt bad for a moment, leaving Jenny and Ben, and Fern so suddenly. A powerful wave of homesickness pounded into me. More than home, more than the sun of Toledo, the clear skies and my old friends, I wanted Papa. I had completely forgotten about the visit of my father nearly a week before. I stood, and noticed the cleaning kit I had been too lazy to pick up since that night. I picked it up, and pulled my father’s sword out from under the bed where I had hidden it, afraid my grandmother might come in to clean and take it away. Gingerly, I pulled off the scabbard. I began to clean it, and as the biting tang of metal polish filled my nostrils, the memory of that night flooded back to my mind.
“You aren’t going to make any friends if you keep running like that.” Almost as if the memory had brought him, my father was sitting by my side, nonchalantly watching the cloth in my hand slide up the blade.
“Papa?” I briefly wondered if I was going crazy, and then decided not to care. He was here with me, and it didn’t matter to me if schizophrenia was what had brought him. The ache in my chest was suddenly gone. “I wasn’t about to cry at school, in front of people who I barely know.”
“You can’t blame a boy for being curious. He was just trying to have a conversation.” He hand gripped my shoulder softly. “You are Spanish, Manny. You cannot hide that, and the world knows what Spain is. They can see who you are.”
“Maybe I need that part of me to go away for a while. Bullfighting stole you from me.” The ache started to settle back in.
“Manny.” I heard the love in his voice. His hand found mine. “I will always be with you. But you need more than me. You need your mother. You need your grandparents. And you desperately need friends. Let them help you.” His hand let go of mine, and he pulled me into an embrace. I closed my eyes, trying to freeze time, trying to lose myself in his embrace. When I opened them again, I was the only person in the room. But I knew I wasn’t alone.
………………..
“You two can leave early today.” Our boss at the library smiled at Fern and I. “We’re pretty much done for the day. I can handle locking up.” Marge was one of the coolest people I knew. She was a lit major at the university, and mildly crazy. She was about five feet tall, and made up for every inch she lacked with an exuberance and passion for life. She had helped Fern and I get our jobs at the library, and we often spent the long, generally empty hours discussing her favorite books with her. Fern and I were currently in AP Lit, and her deep grasp of many of the books we had to read had saved our grades more than once.
“Thanks Marge!” I grabbed our coats, and handed Fern hers. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stick around? You could get attacked or something all alone here.” I was only half joking.
“Because I’ve got so much to get attacked for.” Marge’s sarcasm was unmistakable. “You crazy Spaniards and your misguided attempts at chauvalry.” Marge was big into women’s liberation, despite my constant reminding her that it was pretty much over. She constantly teased me about my “gentleman’s attitude” toward women, saying that chivalry and chauvinism were only different by a few degrees, hence her term chauvalry. Not wanting to lose an opportunity to get home early, Fern decided to chime in.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Marge!” She turned to me. “Manny, do you think you could give me a ride home?” As if I could tell her no.
“Of course!” I pulled her hood over her eyes, and ran off. “Race you to the car!” I beat her by a good four seconds.
“You cheated!” Fern caught up, playfully hit my arm, and got in the passenger seat. We talked casually as I drove to her house. In the year since my move here, Ben, Jenny and Fern had become my best friends. After that fateful first lunch, I told them about my father, and Ben had been completely mortified. It took him another couple of weeks to quit apologizing. As the year progressed, we grew closer and closer. Fern and I had gotten our jobs at the library together, with the help of Marge, who we had taken to the moment she interviewed us. After I dropped Fern off, I headed home, thinking how well my life was going, and how lucky I was to have the friends I did.