Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Perhaps

Sex is out. Sex is out. His only caveat to a question: He asks what I would do if the earth, in 24 hours, would be destroyed by extraterrestrials and so I think for an answer. The funny thing about thoughts is that there are many. The mind is like a small baby bottle full of rainbow glitter. Thoughts are glitter; so small, so many, so different… all held within the same confined space.

I suppose I could spend it searching for the one who, in true honor, I sent to live a different life. Never mind that true honor took a sledgehammer and crashed my chest in. But would I find her? Would she still be her, or would she be someone else? What if she no longer the girl with the blackest hair ever created by the angels? What if she no longer the girl whose steps were those of a ballerina? What if she no longer the princess, Tinkerbell? What if finally, in the few minutes before the atoms split into a universe of pieces, I come to understand the word: unrecognizable?

Should I return to mother's arms? Ask her to tell me one more time, her stories of a story-telling toddler? Would I tell her that tomorrow's sun would no longer be ours? Would I tell her that today's wind would be the last to touch our aging hands? Would I drive her out to El Capitan, see her dig her toes into the summer sand and watch as an ocean waved goodbye? Or would I sit, as once I did, inside her kitchen, bright and clean and with the smell of cilantro, and let her give me the nourishment she knew I needed? She knew…she always knew. Mother.

Or would I fly to Guadalajara and walk the wide walkways of the city center? Would I make my way to that small church, only seven blocks north from the Palace of Fine Arts, and sit somewhere in the middle, for one must never be presumptuous with God? Would I light a candle for my bother and see pigeon silhouettes gather outside the stained glass windows? See how their thimble-like heads bop as they walk on funny feet? Hear them converse in murmurs? Would I dare face the man on the cross whom I so often disappoint? Would I beg… and beg… and beg for his forgiveness? Would he give it to me? Would I remind him of the nights, by bus, I travelled into the bad parts of town? Where, in still the spring of my youth, I shook hands and invited them back for cookies, coffee and you. I was silly only at times. I did good God. I once did good too.

Or would I write sonnets? Sonnets that sang of Wordsworth and his grass and splendors… sonnets that told of tomorrow's children chasing butterflies on American playgrounds and eating their grilled cheese sandwiches… sonnets, whose lines linger and plead like Lorca's plays of men and love and Spain… would I be able? Would it be enough of an offering to the executioners from the sky? Would they leave without casting harm and let us figure things out? Would my words weigh like a thousand mourning mothers? Would my efforts have the playfulness to win them over like a basket full of tumbling kittens and yellow yarn? Would I be able? Would I be able?

Perhaps they would settle for a small baby bottle of rainbow glitter. Perhaps.

Perhaps they would settle for mother's stories of a story-telling toddler. Perhaps they would settle for some sugar cookies. Perhaps they would settle for a copy of Intimations of Immortality and grilled cheese sandwiches.