The Thing in the Tree

I confess my sins to the thing in the tree.

I do not even know what it is, this thing. This thing up there. It’s probably some kid from the school, I’d imagine. Frat pledge. Giant owl outfit.

I mean, that poor kid. He probably believed, going into all this, believed he just had to sit up there in his costume for a few nights. That he’d stare down at the track and think about calculus or Fall Break or girls. That everybody would leave him the hell alone and that soon enough, it would all be over.

Little did he know. Now he’s got some dykey, middle-aged mother of three-and-a-half pouring her heart out to him every other night.

Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrir-kunst

There are rules to this thing.

There are the parts of my life that I can write about, there are the parts that I may never write about, and then there are the other parts. The parts that are kind of in the… in-between.

When I come to one of these parts, usually I write about it in roundabout ways. Like I might change all the names or drown it in blood. I might write about it a long time after it happens or before it happens. Or maybe I will write one story you can see but there will be another story written underneath – written in milk – so that if you hold it over a flame, the real story appears in thin brown letters as it dries.

I Left Her for a Concrete Garden Gnome

Dogs or a gnat. Three dimes, Tuesday, or the space where an old lamppost used to stand. Your Uncle Charlie’s left pinky finger. Dust motes or the long, raspy guitar solo from the studio version of “Free Bird.” Or myoclonic jerks. Or the declining entertainment value of the television program, “Homeland.”  

Tell me: Are our loves less worthy than your own? Less deserving of respect somehow? Can you look me in the eyes and say they’re any less central to our being?

Less sacred?

He caught my eye from the other side of the yard of a neighbor of mine. It could have been the hat. It could have been the ants that ran across the surface of his poorly-painted beard. We made love under the full harvest moon and by morning, I knew this was what I’d been born for.

It was who I was. It is who I am. I was born this way, don’t you see?