{"id":6628,"date":"2014-02-24T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6628"},"modified":"2014-02-24T10:01:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T15:01:43","slug":"could-spirit-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/could-spirit-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Spirit Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CouldSpiritAlone\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Could Spirit Alone<\/strong><\/p>\n

blood, the good Christian<\/p>\n

angry at his lack of power, skin broken<\/p>\n

under the onslaught of memories, terror and omniscience<\/p>\n

transferred to different targets:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

me. wings pump<\/p>\n

when I talk but won\u2019t take me away.<\/p>\n

he doesn\u2019t understand me, fingers<\/p>\n

moving game pieces intuitively but not<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

following any rules. I can breathe fine<\/p>\n

when my glass is full, like now<\/p>\n

but otherwise<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am too afraid to understand<\/p>\n

too confused to leave.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Best to Forget<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We must not speak ill of the dead. Even if<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

she was a fucking junkie slut who<\/p>\n

beat the shit out of her children<\/p>\n

abandoned them for weeks at a time to<\/p>\n

entertain some big talking high-roller from Vegas<\/p>\n

some borderline pimp who wanted to show her the good life<\/p>\n

or just another junkie who was in the mood to share<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

we must only speak of her accomplishments,<\/p>\n

the good things she did<\/p>\n

the charities she worked for<\/p>\n

the people whose lives she touched, people that would have been worse off<\/p>\n

without her good example and personal strength<\/p>\n

because we must not speak ill of the dead, even if<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

he was a fucking drunk who beat his wife<\/p>\n

put her in the hospital so many times<\/p>\n

he should have been picked up by the police<\/p>\n

who eventually smashed his car<\/p>\n

into the back of a minivan full of kids<\/p>\n

put their mother halfway through<\/p>\n

the front window of the van<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

we must only speak of the good things he did, the way<\/p>\n

he could always be counted on to pick one up from the airport<\/p>\n

even at the last minute<\/p>\n

the delicate woodwork he designed for the church<\/p>\n

the way he reinvented<\/p>\n

the blues harmonica<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

we must not speak ill of the dead, even though<\/p>\n

we know in our hearts they won\u2019t come back and haunt us<\/p>\n

if we tell the truth, even if we tell<\/p>\n

all of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My Neighbor\u2019s Dog<\/strong><\/p>\n

I knew something was wrong because his dog<\/p>\n

was out, running from one apartment door<\/p>\n

to another as though trying to figure out<\/p>\n

how to knock or ring for help, despite not having<\/p>\n

proper knuckles or fingers. Finally, the dog just stopped on the landing<\/p>\n

and barked, over and over again<\/p>\n

until I had to go out and see what was wrong<\/p>\n

because nobody else seemed to care. I didn\u2019t either, not really<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but I liked the dog and I liked the kid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dog whimpered and licked my hand as I<\/p>\n

turned the knob of the unlocked apartment and<\/p>\n

pushed my way in, past the stacks of old newspapers,<\/p>\n

magazines, dirty clothes, cigarette trays overflowing<\/p>\n

with ash and wads of dusty pink bubblegum<\/p>\n

to the room where the boy was hanging from a rope<\/p>\n

tight around his blue-and-white neck<\/p>\n

shit, he couldn\u2019t have been more than 20 years old.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dog followed me into the bedroom, tail wagging<\/p>\n

licking my hand as though he thought I could do something<\/p>\n

like he thought I could fix the broken boy<\/p>\n

swinging in front of me. I cut him down<\/p>\n

let him fall to the floor, called the police. Later<\/p>\n

the police told me I shouldn\u2019t have touched the body<\/p>\n

at all, hadn\u2019t I ever seen<\/p>\n

a cop show before? I don\u2019t know why I did it<\/p>\n

but the dog seemed happy when I did<\/p>\n

ran over to the body and lay down beside it<\/p>\n

until the cops came.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That night, I let the dog sleep in my bed<\/p>\n

I slept on the couch.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure how to sleep with it, exactly<\/p>\n

whether it was a foot-of-the-bed sort of dog<\/p>\n

or an under-the-covers type. I\u2019ve known both.<\/p>\n

On that first night, though, it slept smack in the middle of my bed<\/p>\n

head on my pillow<\/p>\n

blankets bunched around its long legs, bony feet.<\/p>\n

I figure, with time, we will learn to live together.<\/p>\n

The Letter<\/strong><\/p>\n

I find the letter from my ex-husband to our son<\/p>\n

my son<\/p>\n

telling him a cousin he\u2019s never met, never spoken to<\/p>\n

has tried to kill herself<\/p>\n

is in the hospital<\/p>\n

may be bipolar, they\u2019re not sure yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should send her a note,\u201d he writes, \u201clet her know you care.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d love to hear from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All day, my son sits close to me, doesn\u2019t<\/p>\n

talk about the letter<\/p>\n

doesn\u2019t know I\u2019ve read it. Instead<\/p>\n

he rambles on about all the books he\u2019s been reading<\/p>\n

how much he hates winter<\/p>\n

the crazy things family members do<\/p>\n

the ones he knows. I smile and nod at all the right times<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

resist the urge to reach out and grab my 17-year-old<\/p>\n

hold him tight in my arms, like I did when he was little<\/p>\n

tell him how much I love him<\/p>\n

how unfair life can be<\/p>\n

how I depend on him to toughen up<\/p>\n

be strong enough to grow up past<\/p>\n

all the crap, the heartache, the disappointments<\/p>\n

waiting for him out in the world<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and how I will never let him go, never, never.<\/p>\n

Tweet<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bird spreads its wings, sends tiny white feathers<\/p>\n

flying about the cage like a sudden snowstorm. Each feather<\/p>\n

is perfectly shaped, almost too perfect to waste<\/p>\n

during a casual cage cleaning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The little bird clucks at me through the bars<\/p>\n

sings as I toss out the old newspapers<\/p>\n

its gift of tiny perfect feathers.<\/p>\n

The millet seeds rolled up in the newspaper<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

will sprout in the composter, grow into<\/p>\n

tiny green plants stretching out for the sun.<\/p>\n

I wish the tiny feathers would sprout as well<\/p>\n

become yellow canary chicks<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

grow<\/p>\n

to fill my yard with song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

blood, the good Christian<\/p>\n

angry at his lack of power, skin broken<\/p>\n

under the onslaught of memories, terror and omniscience<\/p>\n

transferred to different targets:<\/p>\n

me. wings pump<\/p>\n

when I talk but won\u2019t take me away.<\/p>\n

he doesn\u2019t understand me…<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":6832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6628"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6834,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions\/6834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}