Constellation

I can't tell you that I believe there is one particular day in your life when everything changes, and the person you woke up being was not the same person who went to sleep in your bed that night. All days begin like that; with a little bit of chaos and a memory or two, we all plunge ahead with our lives and accept the subtle changes that happen within and around us. But some days certainly do stand out, like stars in the sky.

Like the day your brother fell off a mountain and you watched him helplessly. Or the day you nearly passed out at your best friend's funeral when a classmate sang 'Amazing Grace'. The days you crashed your motorcycle, met your love, moved to Italy, hitchhiked across country. The milestones of your life, like stars in a constellation, have formed a pattern for others to witness and observe. Like a constellation, your life can be viewed and appreciated with the naked eye, but it would take a truly interested person with powerful tools of observation to see what lies between those bright points of light. The uninitiated would merely say Darkness. The witty would admit to a little bit of gas and dust thrown in, and my yoga guru would say it's all connected and part of the same thing.

I wonder what constellation you are, and I am fascinated by your tiny bits of matter, your emptiness, and your many points of light. Some of the world looks up and sees you, and others never notice you at all. They may call you by different names and fight over what you mean to them. But I will watch the sky closely, and I will pay attention to you.

Dissection Of My Heart, Vol. 1

You're hovering over me, sterile scalpel balanced between steady fingers wrapped in sterile surgical latex to inhibit any infections. But what you want to cut out and what I want to keep in are the same thing, and much to my dismay you are the one also in control of the anesthetic. Confidently you tell me to count backwards from ten while you systematically and methodically prepare to open me up, as if you have done this a thousand times. But the drugs are faster than I am, and I can't tell you that I don't want to fucking count backwards, I want to scream that the part of me that you are trying to remove is you. What you think will be a simple procedure, I know is a death sentence. The last thing I hear is you telling me not to worry, everything will be just fine, once we have cured the malady of the broken heart. As often happens, the anesthetic is insufficiently doing its job, and I feel you make the first cut. Not a sharp pain, but more a dull ache, as you poke around trying to find the parts of me that displease you. I can hear your breathing intensify as you accidentally nick an artery, soaking your hands in blood. This is not going as planned! As I feel my body relax not into the mindless haze of the morphine drip but the completely cognizant thralls of a painless death, I think about the good intentions you had with that scalpel. I know, even as you desparately try in vain to repair the damage, that you only wanted to make a clean cut, remove the small piece of me that contained you, sew me up, and then drink to a speedy recovery. I'm not angry that once you were inside of me, you did not know what the hell you were doing in there. I love you in dying as I did in living, and even at the cost of my life, I allow you the experience of being inexperienced in these matters. I'm gone, yet part of me remains to marvel at the heroic effort you put into trying to save me, and the irony does not escape me. I simply hope that you sew me back up with that scalpel still inside of me, so it can never be used again on a different heart.