Something sweeping. Something about light and longing and swimming. I remember feeling that way: suspended and unstoppable. Gigantic and everywhere. In love with four girls all at once, and certain that any one of them could have steadied the hand I’d wrapped around my trigger of a heart. Seeing a street as the sea, and a crosswalk as a teetering rope bridge. This city was epic and insurmountable, and I was its fearless explorer, claiming its every mountaintop in the name of–what?

But I had become my own Aristophanes; the bar was set impossibly high, and I’d put it there myself. And after some shiver-shake withdrawals, I’m facing the city in the cold, swinging, dim light of sobriety, and all the quiet deprivation and disappointment that comes along with it. I can’t seem to see anything well enough to know where it ends and I begin.

In a Jar from elrobozo on Vimeo.

And here’s his band, Le Switch (he’s on bass):

And suddenly it’s three years later. Today, I was closer to my perfect body, to my sainted self than I’ve ever been, and then you called. A static buzz and an interruption in conversion of life and vows of stability. The smoke and overheat of remembering your slanted ceiling in winter. The shattering backfire of your question, loud as it was then. Close as my passenger seat in the rain. The white roar between call and response.

I will do what you ask me to do because of how I feel about you.

A beat of feeling my face redden. I was no less angry, and it was no less true, but I felt the rising tide of my realization of the severity and intensity of what I’d said.

It took nine conversations to drain the residue from my dirty mouth. It wasn’t until the tenth that I found an audience with the prophet I’m learning to love. He offered the gentle, generous truth that people are stupid, sweet and sad. He knows us as a breed destined to become strays, but maybe stray together. He holds us against the warm light of the projector and dutifully recites what he sees there.

And then it was so quiet, and I was calmer than I’d ever been. From birth, my head would whir and overheat, break down like my straining body. And then, so suddenly, white noise. Nothing disappeared, and no oasis wished itself into being. Everything was real and solid and soft and I knew what to want.

If my prayer be not humble, make it so.

When my father first got hearing aids, he was angry with everything, and he’d never say why. When he returned them, the audiologist told him that they didn’t need adjusting, he did. “You’ve become accustomed to your quiet world.” So maybe that’s me, too. I didn’t anticipate needing this much courage to take a phone call, or stand up in the morning.

I need some courage from you now. You, the real you, not the sinking bones on an overgrown hill. Not a photograph of you, or a tape of your voice. The you that breathes and talks and catches me. The you that chokes up unexpectedly, that swears like a sailor, that swings hard, that speaks confidently. This is the steady settling in of what I was always afraid would come to pass: I can’t make it without you.

I missed my mother, for real this time. I remembered my grandfather and thought of him–the fact of him, the flesh of him, the heavy hole where he was–for the first time in months. I let the weight of my brother (the flatline dialtone) hang in the air like humidity, breathed it in.

I hadn’t left all this in the hopes of wishing it away. No–I’d held onto it, held and rationed it like halloween candy. Because I know that when your heart breaks, it breaks open, like a pomegranate or an anemone, and everything inside it is hungry and soft and free. And now that sweet and gentle has opened just enough for me to leave, and I will. I own every bell that tolls me.

Take it from ear plugs. Beauty sleep is always in fashion. More pointlessly gendered products here. Fantastic!

The heavy static of going off the air. Trying to drown myself in some new sound, or dizzy myself to distraction. I never quite managed to forget the knit of your brow or the heavy hollow of your voice. Those snake charmer eyes of yours, enticing in emptiness and impermeability.

And your pace. I could never launch into your quick orbit, and was always haunted by the weighty matter of a missed rotation. So, in some frustrated Gift of the Magi, I sped up, you slowed down, and we never managed to meet.

Meanwhile, for the third time in as many years, someone is found on splayed on the sidewalk across the street from my office. Did he fall? Plummet? Leap? Tip? This is always, it seems, lost in the details, held in the dense grey of the unknown. In cartoons, ghosts take the shape of some poorly-projected body, a colorless and smoky memorial. His is different: a traffic cone, a bouquet of drugstore carnations, and a cardboard sign with a name in felt tip, and the phrase “passed away” added in ballpoint. An afterthought. Ungodly bright, a reminder of obligation, and a quiet catalyst.

Do you like me; will you go with me; can I stay. Check one: yes, no, maybe.

Years later, I lay with a friend, hair curled by the stories we’ve told. She asks me what the stranger looked like. I said he was small, swallowed whole by his clothing. A wormhole. Overwhelmed to the point of active nothingness. I see him, concave, and know no pathology. So what does that make me?

A little heart attack. The cool catch of your breath and a little death. Jouissance, life beyond the pleasure principle, and still so little without you. Something caught in the rear view. All that’s left is a laundry list of reasons detailing precisely why I’m not your petit objet a. No sudden explosion and soot-covered face, no banner from a dimestore pistol. Just the uneasy settling in of the reluctant resolute.

This month is my fifth anniversary here at madeofglass. Since being here, I’ve transferred colleges, graduated, fallen in love with an unexpected line of work, found a home in a new politics, lost my grandfather, broken up (a lot), and hit my stride.

When I started posting, I was cautious, to say the least, and certainly guarded. Since then, I’ve sunken into this site like an overstuffed armchair. It’s always accommodating, always comforting, always a kind refuge. Thanks to everyone here, I can–and do–write about anything and everything, and I always feel at home.

So, for the last five years: thank you, Tripp. It’s been an extraordinary experience thus far, and I look forward to a whole lot more.

Written by me, voiced and produced by my coworkers.