treeline

Two days into our trip to Grand Lake,
my uncle said he wanted to get above the treeline.
I was still breathing hard at 8,500 feet, spending
mornings down at the dock, toes squealing at the water.
It was too cold to swim, so I read a book
on the beauty of grief and tried pretending
I was finished with all of it, heart-wound sewn and sealed
like new. But there are some things you can’t will
from cell memory: a baby’s neck,
your father’s cologne, the ridges of a basketball
dimpling your palm, the blue
chlorine of the pool you almost drowned in.
Inside my body, there was a wreck
of longing and countless places needing healing.
The climb begins where it begins.
But there is plenty of air.
There is plenty of time.

prelude

Nothing is more or less important than this:
that first nudge we make toward the edge of the couch,
the door, the marriage, away from the old story
we can’t make fit anymore.
And then we slip into the larger mystery,
biting our nails all the while,
wondering if we’ve killed our chances for happiness,
if the people who love us most will understand the need
for this strange detour, if the answers will be any less
elusive, if the net underneath will fray and falter,
then disappear altogether,
if our hearts will suffer irreparable damage
from so much longing.
It doesn’t matter,
or it does. We will say it made all the difference,
or we will forget
it made any, because by then,
we will have already fallen.
We will have already saved ourselves.

intermission

And so they will rise from their seats,
fan out into the hall, head straight
for the bar or the bathroom or
to call the babysitter and check on the kids.
And the stage will lose its currency, its showmanship,
the actors their roles. The story will throw its lines
into the fire. And this act of dispersal
will bring the lobby to life. A hum
will overtake the walls, the marble floor
warming with the to-ing and fro-ing of shoes.
Perfumes will collide and the hems of dresses will touch,
fleetingly, in the foyer of the ladies’ room.
Lovers will mingle unknowingly with widows,
artists with politicians, children of assaultive alcoholics
with secret, sweet drunks. There will be a pinking of cheeks
from the unexpected heat, dollars absentmindedly pressed
into tip jars, and an innocent exchange under a balustrade
will produce a phone number and magical thinking.
Someone will almost slip on a square of dropped ice. Another
will drum up the plot of his next novel or realize that he must stop
writing altogether. Spouses will lean close for one clarification
or another, or try to remember the name of the couple just approaching.
A glimmer of hope will twist and spin from the small space
of held hands. Ghosts of a cottony memory will slide from the balcony:
five years old and the first matinee, 12 years and that unbearable opera,
19 in the aftermath of sex; 23 in the aftermath of their divorce.
The line will seem so long until it doesn’t.
Lipstick will be reapplied, a matte pucker inked into a tissue.
A man will offer a handkerchief to someone unfamiliar.
Bodies will weave and sway like a school of fish around a carcass.
It will not last long.
Disorder is typically, almost predictably brief.
A bell will ring and a light will flicker and they will know
that this limbo between acts is coming to a close.
They will climb up the stairs to their little square seats
and decide which of the arm rests is theirs and they will tighten
one thigh against the other to thwart an accidental touch
with a neighbor. Their gaze will ignore everything
but the stage and the curtains will draw back and the music will begin
and they will disappear into the shadows and be quiet about it
as the spotlight halos down below.
In the dark, their shoulders will hunch down.
The playbill will tighten in their fists,
and the story will rise from the ashes and reassemble,
and the actors will continue their charade.

Were it not for the untidy clatter on hard stone.
Were it not for the weight of shifting legs and the curving line.
Were it not for the fracturing of silence and memory.
Were it not for the unrehearsed.
Were it not for longing.
Were it not for error.
Were it not for uncertainty.
Were it not for collision and undoing and mess.
Were it not for thirst and risk and love,
the show
would never go on.