I really hate needles...

 … but unpleasant experiences do make for interesting poetry.

 

Blood Draws Don’t Leave Scars

I keep a tally of blood draws

at the back of my mind.

Two times (too often) I’ve sat in that chair,

vinyl coating too thick

to let me sink in, so tall it was suffocating.

I always closed my eyes

tight, like squeezing the air out of them

would distract me from

the slowly suctioning sting.

It would take all of my focus

not to bend my elbow,

not to even think about it,

counting breaths like nauseated sheep.

 

Most days I try not to remember

but in the dark it’s harder to blink away

and I fall asleep counting blood draws

instead of sheep.

My job is boring (?)

If you were to investigate the pockets of my work pants, you’d find nothing valuable in the traditional sense, just a plethora of meticulously folded slips of scrap paper graffitied with random observations. You’d probably think, “whoever wrote this is trying really hard not to be bored.”

You’d also probably think I make a habit of eavesdropping on people… and you’d be right.

It sounds nosy, but really, you can’t blame me. I work at a grocery store where the most exciting thing to ever happen is the Little Debbie snacks going on sale for 99 cents. My job is basically to stand there being as unobtrusive and non-unpleasant as possible, occasionally pointing people in the direction of the candy aisle, which no one can ever find (no doubt the result of some healthy-eating conspiracy). As such, people trust me to be bored and uninterested in their lives.

Their conversations float right into my space, like unmentionables on a laundry line, blowing in the wind. In the same way that you hold no guilt for double-taking when you pass your neighbor’s old-fashioned knickers catching the morning breeze, I cannot be blamed for collecting little bits of the lives around me. They stick like sand on wet shoes.

The things I hear are rarely scandalous, scarcely spectacular (though I keep my eyes peeled at all times for signs of mischief). And they certainly almost never have the remotest connection to me and my own business. No, it’s the trivial and harmless things I pick up, the tidbits of ordinary no-nonsense that people carelessly toss in among the pennies in their pockets.

“So-and-so had too much to drink on Monday evening.”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll be heading over around six, and I’m way ahead of you; I already picked up some Doritos.”

These things–the weekday hangover of a random stranger and the unapologetic devotion to a processed snack food of another–are the kinds of things that collect in the lint traps of my discreetly attuned ears as I mindlessly scan (and occasionally bag) people’s groceries. It’s important work I do.

You see, I’m not really a cashier–that’s simply a cover, an elaborate and cunning ruse. My real profession–my solemn duty, if you follow me–is in bearing witness to the everyday tedium of existence. I am a piece of furniture collecting the dusty particles of mundanity that provide the filler between the significant moments in our lives. These things are the the peanuts (or raisins, depending on your viewpoint) in our trail mix, the white noise we miss in a soundproof chamber.

They make us who we are–for the commonplace is what defines the extraordinary.

When I leave this world

I can’t imagine a better goodbye than the smooth, unencumbered sound of jazz piano.

Death by Jazz

It’s nothing dramatic, of course.

Barely even momentous; unobtrusive

as Bill Evans and his piano

and the subtly smirking Autumn Leaves.

You just lie there, arms heavy

like two lengths of rope draping

over the side of the bed

towards radio waves that shimmer,

individual stars dancing across the carpet

warmed slightly by the sunset’s glow

leaking in through the blinds.

They waltz on over–

a little out-of-time and probably

a bit slow, for a waltz–

brushing the ends of your fingers,

just in case you forgot

what you’d be missing.

 

Bill Evans sends his regards from inside the disc player

as the room breathes in around you–

he and the rest of his trio,

cloistered in an endless jam session

forever releasing impressions into the air.

They have nothing better to do

than shuffle along, each beat stretched

trying to catch specks of dust as they float, forgotten

alongside your hands dull

and dimmed,

hands that won’t move to clap

after that loose bass solo.

 

But no worries,

they’ll know you meant to anyway.

Wipeout (part 2)

If you’re one of the 2 people that faithfully follow this blog, you may recall a poem I posted millennia ago, titled Wipeout (see that post here). At the time I mysteriously hinted that the poem was loosely based on a traumatic bicycle-related incident from my own past and that I would, in time, share the story of that trauma with you. I know you must have been eagerly anticipating it ever since that day… and the wait is finally over.

The time has come.

Fasten your helmet straps securely, kids. I have a story for you.

…

The day was bright and hot. The sun was high in the sky.

The bike was indubitably badass.

At my request, no frilly tassels graced the handlebars of this bike, for it was no girl bike. I didn’t want my enemies to be showered in glitter; I wanted them to feast on my dust.

I received the bike as a gift on my eighth birthday, and as I beheld it in all its red-and-black, lightning-slashed glory, I knew in my rebel heart that this was a vehicle with a single purpose: speed. And speed it did.

Looking back, the outcome of this story should have been entirely predictable. The bike itself was emblazoned with the word “Wipeout” along the frame, like a chilling prognostication of the doom it brought. I should have, literally, read the signs.

But of course, I was then a short, far less pragmatic version of myself, unconcerned with the Doom of Man. I was Hercules, Conqueror of Monkey-bars, Numenorian, invulnerable. My best friend had recently taught me, with a wooden sword and some plastic armor, how to lop off the heads of my opponents in battle.

I didn’t fear the bike. Not then. When I first met it the bike feared me, and I knew the pavement would soon quake beneath my tires.

Fast-forward a few days to the aforementioned hot, sunny day.

This day was a special day, set apart from all other equally stifling Nebraska summer days, because not only was I eight years old, I had a new bike. And not only did I have a new bike, but my mom had agreed to let me ride it down our street to the playground. All by myself. My time had arrived.

I shuffled my vehicle of two-wheeled awesomeness to the edge of our driveway, outlining the route through my glasses. The playground beckoned from the bottom of the hill, its lurid green and purple equipment radiating heat like a moth-drawing porch light. I could see the chains on the swing set glinting in the sun.

I took off.

The stars had aligned on that perfect day, for no cars jutted out of out of their respective driveways to impede my flight. I had been granted a clear shot straight down to the playground.

The bike was fast, but I wanted faster. I pedaled. My hair snapped behind me like a flag of triumph, and the wind tasted like the sweet freedom I had only ever dreamed of in my entire eight years of personhood.

At the bottom of the hill, the sidewalk turned sharply to the left.

If you remember, eight-year-old me was no stranger to feats of daredevilry like sharp turns. I had climbed the rock wall at the sporting goods store once; this bit of curving concrete just ahead wasn’t about to stop me. And so, thinking myself utterly capable, I rounded the turn, squeezing hard on the brakes–new, grown-up handlebar brakes–in what I surely thought to be a controlled manner.

My momentum met its kryptonite. Or, more precisely, my bike’s momentum met its kryptonite. Consequently my body, being made of tangible matter and not shimmering light particles, was carried forward by that pesky inertia Bill Nye had warned all us kids about. I launched over my front tire like an armless penguin.

My face smacked the ground, hard. Needless to say, it felt like someone had thrown a brick at my mouth. Someone with really good aim.

I tasted blood and screamed, my invincibility shattered. The mom I’d left behind in our driveway came running to my rescue, driving home the fact of my actual helplessness.

My bike had betrayed me. It would be over a year before I’d ride again, rolling timidly down a new (and steeper) driveway, pumping my brakes in cautious paranoia.

I don’t know what it was that hit me so hard (other than the sidewalk), but something heavy kept me from getting back on that bike sooner. For a kid with a resume full of daring exploits, I had always been remarkably prone to nightmares. Darkness brought with it a creeping chill, and over that next year I spent many late nights feverishly suppressing bicycle-related panic. I felt unstable. Looking back I think maybe I left behind a bit of myself at the bottom of that hill, a piece of the innocence that let me believe I could trust my own judgement.

Now, on this side of a decade, I can chuckle at my younger self’s foolish bravado. As a poet, the irony of a bike named Wipeout strikes me. I love telling this story and showing people the gnarly scar where the sidewalk sucker-punched my lip almost twelve years ago. I have, as they say, moved on.

But on summer days, as I cruise down the road on my new adult-sized bike, high-fiving trees, at the crest of every hill I still feel the ghost of a past self pull back on my handlebar brakes.