Futile.

You get Sufjan, and he's a treat, so listen.

We have stories that are secrets in their own regards--silence in their tellings.

There are words we never want to say or hear or feel.

And these are such: Cancer. Love. Death. Distance. Time.

They are harmful and breaking and painful and I fear them. I do not feel safe or happy or comforted. Right now, not even by love. But that's for another day.

I'm surrounded by cancer, in the women we've lost, the men we're losing, the places we're going.

And I feel useless. I can do nothing. I can pray. I can cry.

I've done those things, and I retire in curious March sunsets with nothing, feeling nothing, feeling scared.

I do-love you-I do.

I can change the way I feel, and the way I experience what happens around me, but I cannot prevent the spinning of the earth, or dark empty breath and its stopping, or the growing of tumors.

I cannot force life to function under the realm of my whims.

To try is futile.

So I do nothing and cry and pray.

I see the astounding simplicity of who people are---

In strings and salads, running shoes, tobacco pipes, haircuts, hubcabs, VHS tapes, nail polish, name tags and needles--for creating and destroying-- and in crossword puzzles, veils, backpacks, sandwich bags, and text books.

I see truth in picnic tables and Midwestern Oaks and the conversations we've never had with the people who have always needed them most.

We see truth and we keep quiet.

And I would say I love you, but saying it out loud is hard.

So I won't say it at all and I won't stay very long.

There are things we ought to say, and love we ought to give.

But we are frightened and foolish.

And words are futile devices.

More from Sufjan. Listen. We can do much more together.

The Van

October 2010

For my siblings

We cleaned the old family van today:
the carpets are now more brown—less gray—
and wrappers of twelve different gum brands
were stuffed in the backseat cupholders.

The waxy printed paper tells of
rides home on Sundays after church breakfasts
when each belt was stretched over the hipbones
of a child—one in each of the benches and buckets.
We went altogether and with filled seats:
in one place, at one time.

We sucked dirt from a dozen states or more—
and as many years—from when we gobbled
the Midwest and jumped to coasts in summers
when we children drove alone, all learning, all leaving.
The sand of seven beaches came up and out
with football pads and baseball bags,
record players and poems scribbled on those wrappers
and napkins that wiped all of our faces
of foreign filth and the sin of thoughtless travesties.

We had left our childhood skins in the upholstery
with engagement rings, teenage things
who we were, and how our family exhaled.