Like roses in a pill canister. I ask when magic stopped being real. Love is a magic trick. Something you applaud like an audience. It’s for magicians, not you. The things my characters tell me about myself.
A first straw of sunlight. My feet in warm sand. Waves curl and break. Even beaches turn chill. Asking me to explain why I love you is like asking me to catch light or count grains of sand. Like wheat planted on the beach.
How do I explain something that can’t be touched but is everywhere around me?
How do I put into words someone who doesn’t love around my past but through it? How do I stop leaning when I have leaned for so long? How do I stop breaking? Shattering. Tell me not to be broken glass.
For so long I leaned. Through divorce. Inward. West Point. Inward. Deployments. Inward. Ranger school. Loss. Jail. Recovery. Relapse. Prison. Ambulances and hospitals. I am dense from all the leaning.
What can anyone say to hurt me? What can they do to reach me? What are they going to tell me about life that I do not know? I have folded in. And out.
If Bukowski had bluebirds. I have flowers. And it’s something what they can do in the dark. In desolation. How close a man can be to death and still live.
I am a body. You are a soul. I am sand. You are ocean. God. Skies. Blue blue blue blue depth.
Want to know something crazy? Tell me. I have had nightmares my entire life. Tell me. Longer than I can remember. Tell me. Looking for something. Tell me. Running. Tell me. Looking. Tell me. Can’t find. Tell me. Wake up crying. Tell me.
No more waking with lashes in my eyes. No more choking on Afghanistan’s splinter bones. No more Kunar Province mountains standing through my back.
The voice that tells me to die. That hangs heavy in the room like a Goodwill painting. Silenced. Replaced by a whisper. You sang a song. Gave a hope into the heaviness. All my stored insignificance fell apart. Like old cicada. You tell me. If you are going to be alive you had better be alive.
Melt intoÂ
me. Be myÂ
wax. I’ll beÂ
your flame.
One day we will sit together and all those simple things will be right between us. And then what will I have left? After the secrets are burned off like steam. After my mystery is mustered upward like a soldier to Valhalla.
Break of dawn when it hits most. Quiet moments when it strikes. I don’t don’t don’t don’t matter. But I do. So why is it like climbing Mount McKinley to know it? Why is it like steps on ice? Why is it like putting ropes across a chasm to tell myself one good thing? Why is it screwing with my head?
I am aching tired. Exhales like orcas. Swollen ocean. Salty tears. And it. Hurts. The way they’ve left like parades in the opposite direction.
Having to be here. Is worst. Being written and having to write. Being near people with walnuts for eyes. While they go on dying.
I don’t have to feel it to know it. Others have felt it. Love by proxy. 11 minutes away. Degrees of separation.
I feel so much. Sometimes I am more waterfall than man. So callous that I become cold dark void. In this conflicted wasteland I understand I am better dead than alive. Having all my meaning in death and not in life.
I do matter. I do. Another step. On ice.
Looking around this place. Some kind of freezer? Blocks of cubed ice. Wondering what this means. No coat. No gloves. Always thinking I will be fast out of the cold. Caught unawares. Precarious.
How do blue birds stay dry in whiskey showers? How does blackness grow flowers? Stronger at the broken places. Arrogantly quoting Ernest’s suiciding passion like it didn’t hurt. Didn’t lament. Like war does not follow you home.
Breathe. Breathe. It’s nothing. The morning is full. Snow is melting. Raise the blinds because the sky is half-filled with blue. Smeared with early morning highlighter. Birds don’t take flight. They sit the power lines.
Take your time. Not all at once. Not cataclysmic. Not so cold. It’s just a chill in the air.
I wrestle my lip with my teeth. Clench until my face turns stone. Coffee. Emails come that I don’t give a damn about. Messages ring through. Questions about things more idle than wheat. More patient than seagrass.
There’s got to be more. Because I can’t keep on for what’s here. Beneath me. In front of me. Are you a soldier? Writer? I am barely man. Half-dissipated human. My half-reflection kicks memories from the monitor.
They want answers. Why do you drift to a distant shore? Why do you dissolve? Vanish? Disappear? Don’t you see that you are.
I imagine sometimes. That all my atoms will. Stop. All movement will cease. And I’ll be. Gone. No one will find me. In time no one will look for me. And it feels like everything I have ever wanted.
I don’t explain it because light needs no explanation. Sunrises and sunsets speak for themselves. They offer no explanations and demand none in return. I sit. Stand. Rise and lift. Bend in the breeze like wheat. I go away. Out. And in.
I take it. Learning to love for the first time. Like early morning dew and flowers in the shadow of the moon. Waiting, patiently, without grand expectation. For the first straw of warm sunlight. And whatever I do not already know.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
"I imagine sometimes." I don't. I know. But the world tells me it is madness, and I am medicated for such. Perhaps not a smart move, but I cheat. I lean into this memory, this trauma I have inside. I try write, but I tear it all up. I am not dead. I am just imagining it. I am making up stories. I am just holding a facsimile of what I once knew for fact. Sometimes, I slip, the madness makes it out to be more than imagination. When you are a ghost, everyone is an angel. Even the demons, it's only their job; they are just playing pretend. Like I do when I write now. It sucks but I am a coward. I'm not brave enough to let the madness take me, like it should.
This was a very good read. It made me angry. Not with you though.
Your writing rips me open every time Roman.