shipwreck in july

i.

 

they came from something and nothing,

learned to embrace it.

but they never quite learn how

to talk about it with me,

even though it's a very open secret.

i am not sure they have ever

quite accepted these origins

or circumstances enough to

speak openly about it.

their childhoods are framed

from the perspective of triumph,

not trauma.

never the hurting, never the healing,

never the unconscious responses

they might have had in behaviors or speech

years down the line.

their childhood simply happened, an

almost disconnected chapter,

as if it all happened to other people.

 

the boy grew up never holding

the whole world.

He watched everything

change so fast, slept

never knowing if lightning

would strike, make him

lucky.

the girl speaks more about the things she wore,

the things she did after school,

the boys she knew and the girl friend

who died in a car accident.

 

both grew up and moved away -

evenings past by quickly,

days bled into each other.

wondered why they bothered

when life was always

overturning them.

she got lost in English

magic, or in

what she loved and had left behind

in Tripoli.

he planned out the next

sixty years; didn’t plan on

coming home to someone like

her.

 

They met one day and never

really tell how.

I forget and forget when they do.

Could swear that if I didn’t know better

that they knew each other all

their lives and did

everything right to end up together.

 

 

ii.

 

the more i learn the less i feel like i know them.

like the past has turned to dust and sand, grinded

into cigarette ashes.

how easy it seems to lose years to time, to leave

so much behind.

i can never find the right way to say it but it sometimes

feels like growing up has a price i'd like to not pay:

you leave so much behind to grow up.

and the more I hear about their past, or the things buried in the silence

i'm left to figure out on my own, i know i am

missing something terribly; i am nostalgic for something.

but i don't know what.

 

what could have been, maybe. or who and what

could still be here, like the elder family members

long dead who i miss or want here despite never knowing,

how i wish i could ask my great-grandmother if i can

have her name for my own.

but instead i need to ask my Sido and i’ve been too scared to

broach the subject, like i might taint her memory or all of his

if i open my mouth to crochet my words together.

 

i used to think i was too involved in hearing their

past to have such an emotional reaction,

but sometimes i wonder now if i am grieving for them

because they have never grieved in any way

that seems tangible to me.

no tears, no outbursts, no short temper, no obvious denial.

just an acknowledgement, and then the utter finality of moving on.

 

so i cling to the stories and make them my safety blanket

that i drape around me in the dark, and i wish most of all

i could meet my great-grandmother as i am now.

i wonder if she would love me, if she would have liked to be around me.

and i hope that i would love her something fierce.

 

maybe what bothers me is that the knowing of people is so short, and when they leave,

the leaving is forever.