found

april 24, 2001

i don't know how to say goodbye

i know this because i am only now seeing the sunrise after my mother's death. 19 years after the nightfall.

because i sometimes catch myself imagining running into the boy i loved when i was 17. then running my hands through his hair.

then running him over with my car. the fuck.

because i have lost friends - sandy, kathy, renee - and daydream of open-mouthed laughs and awkward-at-first crushing

lopsided hugs. i look for them through the sunlight on the street, at parties and on the highway, on vacations, trying on

shoes. i peek around people, stand up and look alert in case any of these old fiends see me in mid conversation

with a new friend. "oh look," she might say, "i think this might be an old friend of mine." and perhaps instead of aligning herself

directly between her new friend and me, like a perfect solar eclipse and think herself small, smaller, smallest, bright, brighter, brightest.

"i look better now than when you knew me, no? i look happier, no? wiser, yes? lovelier even? on a scale of 1 to 10 i am definitely happier and wiser. lovelier, let me think... i feel lovelier. my complexion is good. do i have anything in my teeth? my skin is warm. am i blushing? yes, yes, fuck, i

am definitely blushing. stop blushing. stoppit.

"and how've you been?" as if it was a week ago instead of 6 months, 6

years, closing in on a decade. and i would smile and a thousand clouds would pass behind my

eyes and crease my forehead. i

would smile even more, a more and more crooked smile because i have a tendency sometimes to smile more with right side

so that the cheeks get very apply. like my mother, maybe. but also grabbable, and so i try to stop smiling. then

remember that is part of what stirs up my charm. so charming. so child-like.

so the me i was 20 years ago when my sister's first boyfriend squeezed my cheeks so hard, he left two red yelling mouths where the flat of his thumbs pressed to meet his forefingers. so hard. so

i am remembering. remembering how he beat his sisters. i don't think i ever saw this, only the afterward, the snakes of fear throughout the house, the whispers in the corners and the girls hiding their faces in their luxurious hair. his dazzling smile almost erasing the pain. almost. and later

years later, paula said yes he did. she knew then, but thought time would heal, would change, would...but no. she knew then but did not know, the snake charmer is partial snake, is inscrutible, is unhavable. his allowance as the eldest son in a harem of sisters and her birthright to Equality pulled and push until...she did not ask until she needed to know. and still

i would smile to see you again, ronny. the pressing

thumbs. smile until i remember the red screaming mouths. strange that you gave THIS THIS other you to your sisters who did not play sports, could not. but i, the 12-year-old football fanatic, to me you taught the step-over, the overlap, the rainbow, the one-touch wall pass; and through you i met my first

football legend, your uncle pat, barely older than you, who played for the iranian national team and who was first opened and then dropped by a leering knife in an airport when he tried to break up a fight. in an airport where tempers flair and men lose themselves in transition. shrinking and shrinking

this smile when i remember your sister mary, 10 days, i think, younger than me, her blue-black hair, brown-isis eyes, throaty hoarse laugh. our shared secrets. walking arm and arm with with them i was yellow bright, she reed slender and coffee warm. i would smile until i remembered...always the smile and always what comes after the smile. and still

even then

even then

despite what i know, which hides in the folds

of what i know, i would like to see and to remember.