Conversations Among the Ruins

Roughly a year ago I went back to Tucson for the first time in seven years. The first time since Robb died and I never returned to my house or my job or the two or three friends I did have.

I drove to Phoenix and went to a party with my burner friends, passed out and woke up in the morning. We walked to a starbucks with Jim's old dog Sasha and got her a cranberrry scone, because that's just the kind of person Jim is.

A brilliant man that adopts a sixteen year old dog and walks her to starbucks every day, feeding her scones while he reads chemistry books.

I don't know what happened but I saw the "10" freeway and I had to go. I gave him a quick hug and with a startled look on my face stammered "I have to go. I just have to go to Tucson. Just right now. I need to go alone. I love you."

And I left. I left and I drove in that sun with a bright decible of light only found in Arizona. Stared with chills at the "hook" mountain that lies in the middle of nowhere, the 10, between Phoenix and Tucson. I was so afraid. So afraid of what I would see and what it would make me feel because let me tell you something

I'm twenty eight years old. I've been sober for two years. What that means to me is that I've been alive for twenty eight, and I've allowed myself to "feel" what I'm "feeling" for two years. Two years. That's nothing. That's everything. Anyway.

Afraid of the dirt and dust and heart that changed places the way that all of that did, but in the deepest corners, where the sun didn't go - the flip side of accidental salvation remained. I was afraid of how the last time I cried there was when I was blown on oxycotin on a roof because I already knew what would happen - that the double rainbow told me. I was uncomfortable that my life was placed upon a fake tablecloth that was ripped out from under me and

nothing fell back into the same place.

I pulled up to what was our house first. The house I tried to cook dinner in and where I cut up what was left of my clothes and stared at a crack in a sink after I held my cell phone under the faucet/ best move of my life

Where we drew with chalk with Mariposa and the stuffed unicorns and played with her the game "Witches" where we could cast spells on each cactus in the garden. Where he punched me and comforted me and nodded out over enough K to kill half of North Korea.

The house was empty so I just stared at it. After that I met Lola at Coffee Exchange because she was in Tucson that week on a fluke. Lola and I first got close because she was the first person to ever read my novel. She had gone to the U of A in Tucson and I sat there, in the Coffee Xchange coffee house where I had worked, bought my sanity back at $5.50 an hour - with my hands

just shaking. I couldn't stop shaking. My tongue was shaking and do you know the fuck what?

Lauren Schroeder being with me in that coffee shop that day made it a completely different place. We went to what had been Robb and I's house together and I just stood there. I didn't have a reaction except for this film reel of the shit I used to accept as my life. It just looked like a worn out, dirty place.

It reminded me of how far I had gone to change in my life.

"There is nothing for me here." Is all I said as we walked away. Three houses down the street what had likely been a strung out artist had been evicted. There was just this gigantic trash pile of shattered glass and all of this art that consisted of skulls and eyeballs, cows and crosses and all of these dark symbolisms of death. I took a lot of pictures of that trash pile, just a few steps from the house I thought that

if I saw would change me, but it didn't.

Death on the floor inside or out - I simply turned around and walked away

with a few things I didn't have before.

A better person.

It was dinosaur thunder
in a butter cream bowl.

They pitched lightening
bugs in the dark under
cimmeron
stars.

Her feet
blister and smell
of bleach.

It was a birthday party
she never went to,
or saw or

signed a card for
but she always
felt it.

Felt it like a hurricane
on a glass
chess board - where

sand
erodes slowly
at first and

shatters
even the colors
one would call something
bland like

pretty.

Doesn't matter
where he went she

just knows
where he stayed.

In her blisters.
Out of her mouth

within that

sweet

exorbinent

thunder.

She took herself
across the country
and back across

another half of
the country and
back into some house

tripping acid
watching the walls
melt and calling it

"spirit." Wearing a
10 yard black
sheet.

She moved and
moved and moved
and loved and lost

and lived and died
and her hair it
grew

longer and longer
and longer until

one day it had been
so many many days
in between seeing his

pictures that after
so many places
and all that

hair and time and
living and dyeing and
self re construct out of the

decay those pictures
they

choked her.
It isn't that she
forgot what he had
looked like.

It was just
how suddenly
it seemed

he suddenly
looked so

young. The reality
that he never aged
beyond those
photographs.

The reality of all
she fails
to remember

wishes she
failed to
remember and

fails at
remembering
her part in all of it
completely because

years
ago

she put those
pictures away.

She put them away
and her hair grew
anyway. She died

and lived
anyway.

The world she
lived in became

faster - more
clear. She left and
left and left

and left and no
matter what it
never changed

what left her
first.

She grew

up strong.

The

dust

formed
just the same.

I guess
for this special
day I could re

live the writing out
aspect of what I
lived through on

July 12.

I've done it seven
times and that's
about
enough.

My boyfriend he
said goodbye to me
he shot up tar and

it killed him. I've
spent a number
of years

placing correct
dialogue to that
part of me.

It makes me
tired so.

What I have is a
black chip, a
crystal ball

and the ability
to hear
the answers to

the questions I
used to ask.

My year and half
key tag for all those
days I chose life

on the real
plane instead.

For the days I
chose to be
something else.

On an airplane
I thought at 5:00
A.M - how I didn't

cry for the first
time in my life
as the plane took off.

Does he see me
thirteen hours later,
banking

with a smile
at a job I love?

Will he feel this
black chip? I thought I
could knock out

drugs once. Become a
counselor so that if

they wanted they would
spare themselves
the things I wasn't.

But I changed just as
the tides stay the same
and wherever you are

in this vast universe,
I love you and I've
made it.

Just me & my
black chip & this
crystal ball and

that heart of yours
I feel

in both of those
things and

me. It took me
years for the panic
and hysteria of that

day to fade out
of my every day life.
Death has a way of

making the world
just stop - and you try
to re adjust and re adjust

and tell yourself
that life goes on

until

one day
you look back
and realize

the magnitude
of how much it has.

For you a cactus
and a circle in the
sand and a hug

to the air
that I know.

Today,
I do not live
in absence and I

know
that because of me
and my black chip

and this crystal ball
you

never will
either.

The only thing
that has taught me
is the thing

I dislike
the most.

Time.

I used to cry
and ask for
the answers of
death.

Where do they
go? Did I go
too? Can you see
me or hear me - not

fair I need to
see and hear you
too.

Why do I still have
to pay my bills if
I am already
dead?

Why are there still
sidewalks
without you here?

Who am I - you were
the only one to
ever define me without

words. A young
woman defined
by your absence -

that in the end,
all of those services
and quite car rides,

listless flights,
nights in strange
beds alone - were

the death that
became of me. I
remember my

uncles girlfriend
sent me a
sympathy card.

I stared at it,
confused why.

Nobody else
spoke of you yet

the mail
will?

At first I missed you.
I didn't know living
life the way that

people live it
until you
showed me and I

needed to find you,
so I could go there
too. Because somewhere

whatever you turned
into, wherever it was,
must have had sidewalks

too. I decided
a week after you died,
to kill myself too -

because this planet
was stupid and only
even earth like

with you on it
with me

anyway. I never
gave my friends or
family a thought,

only my own
fear. What if whatever
happened to me
after I died

didn't bring me
to you?

I can honestly say
on a night, long ago,
I solemly decided

to myself
to end my life -
no discussion.

But my mind
was so scattered
that I got so scared

I let myself forget.
So I kept
living with my own

sidewalks, and I
started to believe
that somewhere in

that sky, you could
see them too. Only it
doesn't work that way.

At first I missed you.
After that I lost what
it was to even know you,

yet everything was
a constant reminder
of what

wasn't. Years
passed, I grew up
and kept you with me.

That you I imagined
you being, of whom
you never were.

Of whom you
always were.

You've crossed my
mind into a chinese
jump rope lately - the

reality and the realization
that now, on my own
sidewalks, that you may

or may not see,
I know - that I only
found you

when I realized
who I was.

Which is just fine
without. Loss grows
just as a limb. I used to

wonder who you
would be, and how
you would act, what

you would say, where
you would go. Which

ultimately
is right here
to this screen.

Learning only
with time

to call the time
for what it
was.