something a little longer

the inexhaustible exhale of the air conditioning runs straight through me and the walls are all unpainted, leaving the chalky, white plaster the apartment had originally come with. it's a cold hard white that is unbelievable to me. i really just can't believe it if i stare at it long enough.

when i walked into his room, i told my mother that it smelled precisely like dried saliva (but for the record, it wasn't.) she looked at me with surprised eyes and said, since when did you become an expert on dried saliva. but i love that, when people say, yes, that is exactly it, how you described it. no going around it, that was it. it's a feeling of satisfaction, and i say this emphasizing each syllable, sa-tis-fac-tion. it's like i've tamed a bit of truth and cupped it in my hands with something as fleeting and intangible as words. like, an invisible hand extending from brain straight through my esophagus and into my sack of a stomach where i keep all my words secret, in a jumble, and then neatly places them on the bed of my tongue where it is spun into golden fleece, absolutely, thrillingly, and undeniably truthful as dried saliva.

he is something of a legend, a man who has become a monument, solidified in memory somehow even though he is still here. he has become somewhat of a perpetual form, freeze-dried, of only skin and bones. In his blue and white striped pajamas, his head always swivels, from left to right, eyes bright but glassy, swaying. he can no longer speak coherently, but occasionally whisps of sound escape his great cave of a mouth, a deep basin of all his breaths, where all the words he has held back in his lifetime disappear like echoes. his fingers, knocked off from working with machinery years ago (he worked in a little factory workshop behind our old house, greasy, the entire place filled with shadow and metal and dust, where he made sewing machine parts), held steadfastly to the bar on the bed. like a baby! with wandering, kind of wonderful eyes. life in its cyclic perfection, an inescapable wholeness, cruel and wryly unironic. of course this is how a man's life comes to an end, as an infant. how else could it end? what could be more perfect than a return to the womb, to the earth and the oceans and the air?

while this is not really meant to be a memoir, i would like to say, again for the record, that he was a good good man. because i don't know what will be left of him, in the end, and i won't neglect this for the sake of cohesion. right? i'm not even going to put parenthesis around this part. this is my grandfather! and this is a part of his legend. so yes, he was a good man. the epitome of a man of character who was bound to honor and loved his country. he rode his motorcycle to buy us grandchildren breakfast buns every morning, and always sat in front of the tv cutting himself slices of guava with his stubby fingers because other fruits are too sweet for his diabetes. when his wife, our grandmother, lost all their money because of gambling, or because she forgot which article of clothing she had sewn secret money compartments into, he never berated her or blamed her. he never did anything he would have to apologize for. he never did anything he would have to apologize for.

(and this part i'll whisper:) and i already have done so much to apologize for.


his body cannot leave the bed. only two years ago though, he was already bound to a wheelchair. i remember we wheeled him outside in the dense summer heat, to say hello to the neighbors. he's really a shell, even by that time; so much has left him, but only with a bit of lasting clarity left. we smile at him and he looks up at us, waving his head, eyes swaying, and we want to bring some of him back so badly because he's so wonderful and we're outside where sunlight makes miracles happen. i remember, i put my red plastic glasses on him, and i felt so sad and awful because i feel like i'm teasing him to draw out some cognizant reaction, a glimmer of presence. but i smile in his face to make sure he sees me smiling, and god. his face gets all screwed up in this expression like land breaking earthquake shaking, just twisted and contorted in this giant knotted shape of laughter and joy! ha! ha! ha! ha! he's crying through those red glasses that are still balanced on his giant ears, and it's like a volcano erupting!!! he is just so damn amused and moved it's all so amazing and gruesome, and we can all see into his huge mouth, this hole, completely overcome with some kind of break in the heavens, just laughing and crying incredibly and the hilarity is so overwhelming, i can't i just.... laughed.... and..... cried...... incredibly.



i've never loved as much as i did then.
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