From the Heavens
Mark Coleman
You do all the puzzles in reverse. Trying to put all the collage pieces back into the garage sale magazines. Stacked up on a table that’s otherwise uncluttered.
In a dime store, staring at nothing in particular. Looking past the items on the shelves. Either that or looking into them. Wanting to understand the rug on the floor. Wondering if the key to your own heart is in its pile.
You know it has to be somewhere but you’re having difficulty finding it. Did the valves fall into the couch like loose change? Was it left like a penny on the railway track by a kid overcome by curiosity?
A woman tied there. Hollering out in the silent movie. Forever frozen. The intertitles somehow seeming out of place. Unrelated to the action that preceded them.
Playing with your food in the diner. Pushing the peas around in the gravy. Your actions resembling those at dinner when you were a child. Never wanting to be there. Dreaming of far off places. Wanting to grow up on another continent. Another planet.
Australia’s quite a ways. So’s Mars. Either would be preferable. The family a couple tables over. An eight year old in the grips of something that he can’t understand. His younger brother just wanting to get home and play with an older brother that he looks up to.
Leave the homework undone. There’s a whole life ahead in which to accrue knowledge. To learn how many stars and stripes are on your nation’s flag. At the moment, the information is disposable. Meaningless in this endless childhood.
We all carry pictures of ourselves in our wallets whether they look like us or not. The height and weight are incorrect. We are so much shorter. So much lighter. We could float off like balloons. Dirigibles carrying a faint light within their cabins.
The passengers not talking to each other. Not looking at each other. Out the windows all they see are the endless walls of the tunnel. Riding through a manmade night. They never see a pasture or a single flower.
In the bars, they don’t care that they’re turning yellow. Don’t care that they’re becoming sunken. The grapes of their demise between their toes.
Putting the last of their panhandled change into the jukebox. Buying memories in the form of music. Maybe, it’s a song they made love to. Maybe, it’s a song they fell in love to. Something they can shyly sing into their beers. Young again for five minutes or so.
Down there somewhere, they swim without wrinkles. They beam out from senior photos, and smile in their yearbooks. The future laid out like a red carpet. They step onto it. Apprehensive at first but with each step gaining a little more confidence.
Reno is bolder than the rest of us. He drinks whiskey out of his water bottle. We drink vodka sometimes with a packet of ice tea thrown in. Turtle and his girl shoot up in the park. Ask me if I mess with it. I don’t so I just chew on the cotton.
On the wet side, they’re all screaming. I can’t take it and have to go dry. It’s only slightly noisier here than in the chapel. A mattress on a concrete floor that hurts your hips and side. You almost stayed out. It’s a nice day.
You lay on the mat unable to sleep. Turn over on your back and stare at the ceiling. Think of the girls you’ve been with. The singular attributes of each. The backpack you use as a pillow that you’re determined not to lose or get stolen.
Passed out on a mattress in an alley. You were drinking a handle, talking Cool Hand Luke with vets, last you remember. Hanging out with Birdy. Shaking and vomiting. Waiting for 8 o’clock when the liquor store opens its doors.
Sitting behind the bushes drinking your traveler when detox materializes. Thrown in the back of a van in which you’re tossed around. Intake at Denver Cares where they’ll let you have a seizure and possibly die before giving you medication. April telling you that your tremors are just anxiety and that you should go read a book.
Raid the ashtrays early in the morning. Throw the refries in a Ziplock. The sweet, longed for drag. Outside the bar smoking without shades. It’s such a nice day. You decide to spend it walking up and down the steps of the Performing Arts Center. At least until the 11 o’clock feed.
Someone’s brought Howlin’ Wolf to the line and a few of us sing along. Finally able to breathe. We’re clumsy and we step on the notes. Picture ourselves on stage belting out all the songs that touched our hearts.
I wonder whether they’ll be giving out clothes today. I hear around Christmas they give out sleeping bags and tents. Don’t know where. It’s just what I heard.
On Sunday, they all come out. You didn’t get a three dollar Easter egg. They ran out before they got to you. Handing out lunches and Bibles. You consider using the pages for rolling paper.
Sitting on the steps at Civic Center. You give your food away to a newly homeless teen who asks where they were giving out meals. You didn’t want it anyway.
Andrew gives you his shades. They’re so scratched that you can barely see out of them. But they suit the world outside just fine.
James is in the hospital with a wired shut jaw. Got jumped. We’ll all die out here eventually. It’s just a question of when and in what order.
Dismissed. Broken, we sit with our eyes fixed on young couples feeling out the intricacies of a new love. Trying to make out the sunshine that’s pushed farther inward with the passing of each year. It’s somewhere down there but it’s dimming. We’ve tried to pry it out with our grandfather’s pocket knives. Tried to will it out to guide us down this ever coiling staircase.
We are unlike others. Those who think they’re entitled to happiness. We’d settle for some kind of contentment.
A broken dish. An unknown, useless piece of hardware rusting away in a junkyard. A pawnshop full of wedding rings and heirlooms. Memories that will adorn a richer man’s house. Hung like a painting that can never be restored. Never finished. A vow recited with so much heart in it. Now a lost piece of paper. Perhaps, in the bottom of a drawer. Perhaps, in an attic where the dust gathers on the trunks.
The spinster goes to pull out an unworn wedding dress from the time her life almost changed course. Finds that it’s been replaced with a shoe shine box and a bit of polish. Doesn’t know what to do with either of them. Goes to throw it all out the window, decides against it, and begins to smear the polish on a canvas. Hastily sketches a few clouds. Birds falling from the heavens. The unrealized human faces.
The fog rolls in. Brushes away a few tears. Retreats. Pulled away by an unseen hand. Some take the turn too quickly. End up down there by a sea that’s taken so many. Some smile up at a life well lived. Most don’t. The world knocked them about. Left them stained with stolen blackberries they never even had the chance to taste. Lips curled this way and that in the eternal struggle with themselves.
Always trying to find the key. Knowing for sure that someone has a skeleton. Someone has to. But that someone only seems to come in dreams. The palatial welling of pride when she takes your hand and leads you down a populated, paraded street. The people around you finally smiling. Waking a shadow in the distance. Here the swallow can’t fall. There’s no sound of thunder. No flash of lightning. The rain comes in a soft patter. The puddles don’t intimidate. You look at her and wonder if those eyes can hold back morning. It can’t last. If their was any faith left in you; you’d pray that it would. That her fingers would never stop running through your hair. That your fingers could forever be filled with her and no longer with the pebbles of yourself. A self that continually disappoints.
