and you are everything, too.

Every word I say is
like a bridge in Michigan.

My hands have hurt in
these last few weeks,
right elbow locking and frying some
ulnar nerve without real

provocation, and when I stay up late
or I, in distraction, try to pull errant
weeds from the front canna beds
I have worried on your behalf.

I am making videos
of me for my daughter
because I keep thinking
about pictures of you.

that even though the wind blew
and blew things all over the
office and tore magnets off of our
refrigerator, I did it anyways.
I opened windows;
the wind blows and blows.

I have lived in this town
with my wife for almost
ten years, save for 2004
when I took her back to Boston.
I have learned to love it -
but only just, and only now.

The beginning of that love,
I think, has always happened
in the spring, right around my birthday
when the trees are dead one day
and a riot the next, and then:
the wind blows and blows.

Many of our old friends live in Brooklyn now.
I miss them. But old friends from before
Denton are here with us and make life sweet,
and some spring nights on a porch or lawn,
I feel loved and lucky. I feel my potential, still;
I still think of what I might become.

Other nights with new friends, this
town feels as much like home as Boston
does for me. Home is a thing that happens.
I have become just as much of
who I am here than any where else;
the wind blows and blows.

Soon the nights will be still and sticky
and the days will take on words like stove settings –
‘bake’ and ‘roast’ (and maybe ‘fricassee’)
and I’ll wish for this wind and wait for autumn.
Home is a thing that happens to a place;
the wind, it blows and blows.

I’ll bet she smiled thin, like a wire
stooping as she set the fire
did you maybe kick the tires
before you went to jail

We spend our lives in search of a better
version of ourselves, a vision that matches the myth –
but we all fall short of what we think we ought to be
and how we ought to be to the ones we’re with.

A different life would find you free
and being what you’re supposed to be
instead of on an arson spree
to which the cops respond

Thought it up around the house and
brought it up, took off her blouse and
now you’re both out twenty thousand
dollars on the bond.

We spend our lives in search of a better
version of ourselves, a vision that matches the myth –
but we all fall short of what we think we ought to be
and how we ought to be to the ones we’re with.

because there’s no money
in it. The best way to know
who you are these days, the key
is to look to others, so

that you can learn a little about
you. If I am a stranger still
after all this time we’ve gone without,
then I’ll know it was your will.

As we’ve gotten older I have
come to think we look less and less alike.
I have never felt that we shared much
of a physical resemblance: My legs
are short – I’m all torso, while my brother

is built more evenly, a solid foundation
he’s worn well for most of 38 years.
My belief for a long time was that most of what we shared
was an occasional deep melancholy and
a deeper thing for brunettes.

But now I have been his brother
for every day of 30 years. Although we are
separated by years in age (and years apart), he is in
my kitchen or my office when I
laugh suddenly, or

do an impression of The Man.  Now
you can see the resemblance
more in how we act and
who we’ve become than
how we look.

now, at the holidays, instead
of not thinking of you

(and, as a result, relegating you
to non-holiday status,

forcing you to exist only
in the ether of memory
between when I can see you
and when I cannot)

instead now I know how you
feel about your mom and
fight with your husband and

hate Christmas and
seemingly, regret having kids.

(This is why you belong in the ether.)

Mostly though, between my own tweets
about being with my family and
our exact location and
about when Diana’s driving surely
saved us along the scary way home on the ice

I am glad we didn’t get robbed.

]]> http://shortstorieslongodds.com/2010/01/04/holiday-vignettes-3-iii-twitter/feed/ 0 http://shortstorieslongodds.com/2009/12/22/holiday-vignettes-3-ii/ http://shortstorieslongodds.com/2009/12/22/holiday-vignettes-3-ii/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:55:08 +0000 Josh Berthume http://shortstorieslongodds.com/?p=677 In my father’s house:
there is no escape
from The Fart Game