Sometimes I Wake

A Poem by Jared Orlando

Sometimes I wake to the feeling of fingers running along the insides of my ears and I know, I know it’s absolutely crazy but every time I do, and you must understand I always do, I can hear you even whispering about the way the hair on my face zigzags as if every strand is trying to individually escape from the follicles of my face.

Sometimes I even wake to something dragging against my toes, the smooth polish of a week-old manicure, the feel so beautiful and new in contrast to my sandpaper skin and it’s at these times when you’re ready to talk about the most important things. It’s at these times when you say if your father would’ve chosen you over his lover then you could’ve become something, something that drifts over the mountains somewhere safe and just cold enough that the warmth of the afternoon breeze would make your muscles tingle until you totally fall victim to the reclining chair in the sun-dripped living room. It’s at these times that you say your bills aren’t getting paid, you’re not getting laid, your bed isn’t getting made, even in your tirades I would find a flake of love from you trickle down and I’d grasp it and hold it tight.

Sometimes I wake to the distant vibrations of your car up the drive, the transmission grinding like my teeth at night during dreams of falling and then waking and your hands are cupping my face and you say “hey boy, hey. You dashing young steed of a man, you dream like a child whose cookies crumble to the floor” while the scent of your midnight lips put me to sleep like Novocain but more potent, and the want and the need is so strong that I pull you in and ask to never wake.

But sometimes I wake and the realization is so real that my walls drip down and I find myself in a bed in the middle of an art gallery but the walls are lined with people and I’m in the middle squared off by crime scene tape and the lights of the sirens turn my bare chest into a technicolored display and I see you tucked into the crowd with your head in your hands, and his hands on your back, and he is shaking his head, his dumb 2 gallon head. But who is he? Who allowed him to see the masterpiece before you, a cobbled up collection of rocks and shell and bone and hair and I know you’ve seen the Watts tower and I claim to be that but better and I hope he paid full price because I’m here all week.

There are times I wake and there’s a picture under my head that’s still developing and I twist and turn on top of it and when I look in the mirror I find our faces smeared against my nose and neck and across my forehead is a lighthouse in Maine where our feet followed one another’s until you were cold and I put a fire blanket of love upon your shoulders and hid you in my heart until the only thing you could do was lightly breathe in the dip of my stomach while the ocean birds spun and dove and trilled.

What I mean to say is that sometimes I wake and all that is fine and good but you do the same, you put on your face and it is no where near my face and I’ve found that filling a void with blackness is only a void of blackness and I would ask you to come home but I know, your shoes by now have met too many welcome mats and they say your name the way you want it heard, soft and sweet and broken into syllables like puffs of smoke from a steam train. I used to be your steam train but somewhere I lost track, and until I can find my way I’m going to wake. I’m going to wake until my body gives up, gets bored, and decides to sleep.