Block Island

Monday, April 6th

Last night I met God in a dream. No, that’s not right, it was a tangerine. I mean an orangutan. I’m still waking up. What is the day like where you are? Is it the same world as mine? Are you the same? I think I’ll take a walk down to the bluffs this morning, as I did yesterday and the day before that and so on. When I stand at their sandy feet and crane my old neck to watch the rough pale bark of their faces stretch up toward the sky they seem to go on forever, unapproachable ladder to heaven. I get the feeling down there that I’d like to do the opposite of kill myself. Not leaping to death from the top but leaping to life from the bottom. I wish I could reach those great heights with one simple act. I wish I could reach you the same. We’re too miraculously old now to not say what we mean, aren’t we? Come to think of it, is there any age where you shouldn’t say what you mean? And, further, have I ever actually said what I mean? And, last question for now, is it possible even to believe words once they are past your lips? Those pesky soundwaves seem just as liable to collapsing under the pull of gravity. Everything is bones, in the end. The meat of a thing will always rot. In my dream the orangutan, which I should remind you was a piece of God, she told me all things harbor a secret emaciation. Her face was like a dinner plate, fine ceramic. I thought I should eat the truth straight off it but I wasn’t given any silverware.

Thursday, April 23rd

It’s been three days since I’ve left the house. There was a terrible spring storm, lashing rain, wind like fists against the clapboard siding, a pounding against the very earth, like the island was a beating heart. That was last week, though. I haven’t left the house because the sun is out again and I’ve run out of sunscreen. You know how I fear melanoma. Or do you? I have no measure for these things any longer. The sand starts to get into your lungs and you can feel yourself eroding every day. It’s maddening. Sand itself is a product of erosion, why should it wear on me all the same? That’s a cycle of grief if I’ve ever seen one. I’ve seen many. Sorry. I’m very sorry, I hadn’t meant to wander here. I’m thirsty like a dog and the edges of the desk are gouging little lines into my wrists. The day is just beginning. Oh, lord, I don’t deserve it.

Friday, May 1st

Last night’s dream: a crow, black as night etc, descended onto the wooden struts of a sprawling vineyard. The grapes were all red, unpolished. I want to call them jewel-like but they were not. You might guess they were quite violent and ugly-looking, actually. I might have been one of these grapes. The crow, of course, turned to me and said you are no grape, my man. Obviously I don’t believe him.

Saturday, May 9th

Do you think the great and somewhat ancient hydrangea bush grows afraid in the dark? After all this time does it trust that the sun will return again each morning? I know I don’t. Those purplish behemoths explode across every desolate corner of this island as polyps on a dead organ. I’ve always found them somewhat frightening. Nearly eldritch. They seem to grow entirely unchecked and even our most streamlined residents appear afraid to take a hatchet to their branches and reduce their spread. Their beauty is such impressive trickery. I’ve never been able to manage it myself. It seems whatever beauty another has spied in me is quickly and firmly severed and consumed, digested and forgotten. For dinner I assembled a sort of lemon chicken piccata. Not too bad, not too good either. Can you hear the ocean where you are? Even as a distant false hum in the shell of your head?

Wednesday, May 20th

Every time I sit down at this notebook and notch a pen into my fist, I must beg myself not to ask anything of you. Though I need much, though all I could ever want is from you. The thought makes me ill. I don’t want to be saying any of this. Do you rember remember the salt in your hair? Do you remember our tiny, pudgy fingers? Do you remember when we’d look up at the branches swaying, making hard angles against the sky, and say nothing? All that we’ve had is all that we’ll ever get. I’m tired of this broken heart and how it takes two hands to hold it together. I’ve been out looking for spare hands to help, I swear. but it’s just me. So when I write you I become inept. bleeding and bleeding.

Tuesday, May 26th

Somedays I think of this island as a prison. A self-imposed one which affords me many freedoms. Nothing like yours. I thought it better to stay somewhere everyone knows my name, I thought that way at least I know who pities me and for what reason. I never have to explain myself, any potential suitor already knows of the unspeakable hole in my history. When I mount my bike and coast through town I watch heads droop. What is the difference between pride and shame? Each seems to diminish me, each seems to have nothing to do with me at all. Tourism has spoiled me, though. These men in their socks and sandals and bandanas, they come and go having taken much and learned nothing. You don’t want to hear about this. You don’t want to hear about anything, do you? I might as well be whispering to the water, which I already do. The ocean is not big enough, though, for all my madness, nor my gladness, which I do have much of, I should tell you that, that I am happy as well. Last night I dreamt of a great teetering seesaw and woke up bored at the obviousness. A dream should always be impenetrable. I only learn from dreams when they aren’t trying to teach me anything.

Saturday, May Sunday, May 31st

I amnot drunk writing this. I Am Not. You are. Do they let you get drunk in there? I imagne not. god how the walls must taunt you.. what do you do with the faces? where do you put them if they cant be drwned? I want to sleep now but it will be so black down there. in sleep. you nevr never come to me in sleep. But the masks of Their faces do. a face cant be killed, can it? only degraded. I must somehow someway somewhat get you some liquor. Like picking the lock on their antique cabinet with a paper clip. how much more could they hurt us? how much more could they hurt us? remember how we would say that.. and then they would hurt us more. now what? now what? I hurt me? boohoo. what you must think of me. This is what I’ve done with the life you made posibel possible I drink and starve and pound my fists against cliff faces and watch my very important wounds fester and whatever. enough of that. Ok, I think I might may be drunk. I think I might be a sore on the earth. the island’s great blemish. a reminder of evil, yes? in my pain, I remind people of evil. I loathe it. I find it grossly satisfying. What is wrong with, me? speak to me please. I’m alone on the world

Sunday, May 31st

I tried to pry last night’s letter from the cold, unyielding maw of the USPS drop- off box but it would not relent my own words. I do not recall what I said. I fear it was all that I have to restrain myself from saying. Things I don’t mean. I’m sure I didn’t mean any of it, you know that, right? You know me? Will you please tell me you know me?

Tuesday, June 2nd

My carelessness should have killed me a long time ago. The seagulls that terrorize this island with their hunger seem to agree. They ignore me completely. On the beach yesterday I laid the scraps of my sandwich at my feet and they wouldn’t even turn their little black pearl eyes on me. Or was that a dream? I must sound like I’m coming unmoored. No, I haven’t been moored for quite some time. Since youknowwhen. Sorry again. I’m incorrigible. This island brings out the worst in me. Sometimes I idle in the hot parking lot watching the ferry pull out back toward the mainland and imagine myself not riding it back to shore but beneath it, swept under its bulk and dragged along in its swollen wake and crawling out of the ocean soaked to the bone, unharmed, miraculously alive. A faceless someone waiting on the shore shoots me in the forehead.

Friday, June 5th

Another dream: you and me, boundless. No one ever hurt us. You never had to hurt anyone. Yes, a very long dream, yes, I can only dream it while wide awake, yes, it erodes me. God, if I were granules of sand I could go anywhere. If you were sand, they could not keep you.

Saturday, June 6th

Every evil bastard deserves to feel the ruptur rapture of their own violence splitting open their skin. it should not be a crime to right the world’s wrongs. many, many wrongs. I only wish you could have done worse. I wish I could have replaced your hand with mine and bore this bloody burden. But it was always you.

Thursday, July 9th

Let me reassert again my happiness. Every day I smile in the shape of an orange wedge. I find brief companionship where I can. I read Jane Austen with my feet in the water, dead skin lifting away. There is one single tomato plant growing on my deck and I call it a garden. In the night I wander where this island does not allow, I travel far, I travel upside down, I learn what conscious reality cannot teach and wake mercifully shackled to the only place which tethers me to you, though pain is the tether, though I do it to myself, it is my secret emaciation that I gorge myself on your ghost. If I am listless it’s because I tossed the list to the wind. I want all the rest of my days to be like this: cliff faces stoic, wind carving, blissful unthinking. From my window, I can see the ferry pulling in, carrying no one who knows me, no one I will know. Still, I look out for you. I suppose I’m just waiting. I suppose even waiting can knock you about. What are you making me wait for?

Wednesday, August 12th

I love you even now. it’s nothing like a dream. In the worst of all my dreams you still speak back to me. Today the gulls cry out and the bluffs shed pebble tears and every head droops with recognition. I miss you.

Brother,

I dream the same thing every night. I won’t recall it for you. I am happy that you are happy. All I have here are four walls and the comfort of repetition. This is my lot. It is both here and there and nowhere at all. God doesn’t watch over this place or these people. We’ve been forgotten, we are forgotten everyday. You are unable even to say my name, brother. What you remember is no longer me.

No, my world here is not the same as yours. There is not an iota of overlap. To hear you speak of your self-imposed prison makes me violent. It’s going to kill me. Please stop writing so I can love you again. Please forgive yourself. Do not become sand simply because it is the easier thing. Be the beating heart. Then, beat onward. I am.

[STAMPED: RETURN TO SENDER]

And it's some new ailment is in me / Can't divide what's memory and what's dream
Afraid of the empty / But too safe on the shore

Thanks for reading. I have a book you can buy and more fiction to read below. Love you. jw.