This is goodbye. Saying goodbye to a sister who is going to teach English overseas. I haven’t got time for the pain. When I’m through with you, I will still hope. There’s an ocean meeting invincible ocean pouring into my eyes, you are far away in another city now a devil in disguise, with sadness comes a mania of relief (it is just a part of me). There is a part of me that is an experiment (a playing field, a work in progress). (I was born that way) to feel my way in this world with trepidation, to a ghost feeling her way on land. You’ve left, you’re gone. And you’re a ghost, something wickedly despicable but I understand you so much more now. The last time I spoke to my sister was a Sunday and I know that soon the months will turn into years between us. Your beauty personified with the sameness of Ezra Pound. I’ve abandoned you; you’re gone, like Alba. You’ve made history young, standing with your ticket and your visa in hand. At the boarding gate work for tomorrow.
There’s something purified in the hoping. For something sweet in the novelty of youth. So, the aftermath will come one by one. We’ll forgive each other like the appearances of the moon, we’ll exchange gifts and we’ll remember the commodities of childhood. I’ll close that chapter (I won’t pursue him). I hate him so much now I could spit blood. It came from childhood continued. The damage is done (what are the meanings of trauma and casualty), only this remains. When I’m through with you strangely I will still hope. I’m standing here, asking for forgiveness. You’ve arrived on a scholarship. Left all the lions and elephants behind. Parents that you’re sick to death of the sight of, a sister who is mentally ill and who has all the sinister potential of making it anyway and a brother who doesn’t believe that smoking is for grownups. You’ve detached yourself from your childhood, grown as cool as an iceberg. Darling, you’ve made it as far as America. How far is up?
To the blank slate face of the moon, the fat orange sun that shimmers, and glitters in heat waves. And so you stuff yourself with Chinese food and decide this is the life; to live like the rich do, as you take their coats and hang them up with a number at an elite country club in New York, and do everything American as you can possibly do before you die; so, you forget about us. Four stone gods, Buddha-like in your consciousness, all owners of lonely hearts in a wilderness of biochemistry and decay. Once I nestled your head in my lap and breathed in the scent of your hair. Of talcum powder, scent, perfume, skin against skin, not yet old, wrinkly like fingers like prunes from a bath, smelling old; no longer an extraordinary machine, now, you can hardly bare me to touch you. I see less and less of you; you don’t ask to be taken care of (like bipolar me); there are no longer whispers in the dark as we camp out in front of the television, there is only your magical thinking.
Your purity, your humanity, your alchemy. You were born to be a mother (I was not), a saint-maybe, wife waiting in the wings. Already posed in your natural habitat. Your dewy eyes are gems, once diamonds in the rough, once you wore a crown of thorns in childhood in those rough, tidal, shadow-boxing teenage years when bad, bad things happened to show up in your life. A yellow balloon shout of melancholy, no bounce of little hope and so your innocence was snuffed out and planted into a dead nothingness. And yet it still left you with the mind of an angel. Cradled Magus, journey forth destination anywhere.
