by: d. heidel

Someday I will write about myself.  Someday I will write all about myself so that I can see myself, the strands of myself laid out on paper that is itself reminiscent of myself in its blankness, openness, observance.  The words, too, will be reminiscent of me as they will be tattered and dabbled, half-shapen, and wandering, leading, leading to a grand conclusion –?  No, an abyss.  A hole at the edge of the paper burnt by cigarette or burnt by the fire that I throw it all into – kindling, you see, is invaluable when lighting a fire against the blustery cold.  The snow pelting down like silver blades into your face and heat is all that is needed and so you write so that you can burn what is written in the ashen pit of a fire that for the life of you won’t start, no matter how frantically you work the material with your fingers that are slowly thickening and stiffening as the blood slows to the point at which it all turns blue.

Someday I will write all about myself before I have to get up to leave for work or leave for groceries or leave for oil changes or leave for the hereafter.  I’m always leaving.  And in leaving there is no time for sitting and telling.

Someday I will write it all down – I will tell all about myself by telling about you and him and the him next to him and I’ll do it angrily but with a smile on my face or happily with tears in my eyes or fearfully until the shakes leave my hands and then I’ll start over at angrily.

It will all be down.  I meant to describe it already.  I meant to say it in such a way that you’d understand why I did everything that I did and, in understanding, we could be made into one mind and all would be at peace, forgiven and mended. 

But, you know how it is – the blankness is too much; the strands of thought clog and then spurt from the pen, the ink sops the paper and suddenly there is a hole where there should have been the dot for an i and – shit, I’ve got to leave again – and I realize you’ve got to leave too and the tears-smiles-shakes get mixed up and all I’m left with is the shakes that feels like raw caffeine chafing the nerves and where does that leave us?