The Man at the Top of the Stairs

It was never the story you’d tell your parents when you were scared.

Never the thing to share at campfires or late nights at sleepovers.

It was never anything you’d share at all.

Because you knew if you did.

You knew if you described the tall figure that loomed at the top of the stairs in his dark, calf length jacket and length of twisted rope. You knew he’d find out.

That scared you more than anything else.

Not that he was there. That he was aware. That he knew every feint, every eye duck, every shuffled step and skipping jump.

He lived inside your heart so long that his fear made boots pressed paths between ventricles.

You never told because you never could.

Staring up with terror like a waveless sea, they found you stood upright held in a cast of fear.

Technicolor

I think I lived in one of the last childhoods in Portland where vacant lots, brambles, long adolescent bike rides, and phone-free shenanigans existed.

Up until a couple years ago, I still remembered several childhood friend’s home phone numbers. They might be the first things to return if I suffered that Casino Royale torture scene. Although I don’t think I’d tell Le Chiffre that it “tickled.” You could set me down blindfolded in southeast between Foster and Burnside—- 82nd to 12th and I’d be able to stumble my way just about anywhere.

I used to keep packs of gum in that underseat bag that old Schwinn's had. I owned a banana yellow Schwinn varsity that weighed more than I did until puberty hit. With a solid steel frame and brakes that screeched like hellcats, I wasn’t wanting for a more noticeable bike.

It’s funny for all the soccer balls and bikes at the house, my family never had a reliable air pump. On occasion that there was a handpump, the needle for a ball would be m.i.a. and if the hand pump itself was missing, I’d have to get keys to a car, find the air pump, and suffer the ear splitting ordeal of hissed air.

In later years, I’d ride that bike late into the night with teenage friends as we drank and smoked in local parks. There were never cars out at two in the morning as we meandered through the Irvington neighborhood. If I was ever over in SE, I’d be riding in a Scion TC that blared hip hop luminaries like Too Short, Biggie, E-40, and others. I can close my eyes when I smell fresh weed and step back into a memory laced with adolescent hope and nerves. The hovering thumb over the send button of a text to a crush (the first navigation of texts being introduced into my world).

There was an undercurrent of the fear of being seen. I wonder if that’s why I majored in Anthropology— an academic study in observation. It dovetailed with writing. The juxtaposition to my current jobs of teaching and coaching. All those adolescent years were centered around believing myself to being something that couldn’t be articulated in my everyday. I think that was a defense mechanism towards being held accountable for tangible dreams.

It was easier to flit between dreams and aspirations than to hold dear to anything. That way I wouldn’t be crushed when it didn’t work out. It was never a problem of not caring— it was the fear of caring too much that led to apathetic performances in an ultimately self-destructive way.

As it goes, it’s not an unfamiliar story. I think there’s a deep set fear in many of us of being truly known.

But without the courage that vulnerability requires, you’ll never connect to the world or yourself in the ways that count.

And as I walk through this neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon with a gentle breeze shifting the branches overhead. I wonder if this feeling of muteness was always going to give way to incandescence.

If somewhere out of sight— out of the mind. My soul had a finger on that magnesium capped matchstick— just waiting for me to summon the courage to once again strike it.

Doll

A tagged pink carpet draped over the cracked, blistered paint of the front steps.

Moss clung so tight to the roof that you’d need a push broom to remove it.

I’ve run so few steps since returning that my calves feel strung tight as harp strings.

The music blasts in my ears as I let the swell of emotions carry me forward. In two months I’ll have been stateside for a year.

There’s something about that that doesn’t sound right. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe time has swirled in a way where I’m lost in the aspirated bubbles that float on the surface.

I stepped into the night and looked down a dark sidewalk. A coyote stood like smoke just out of reach from the street lights.

When I relax into being— I can hear the notes of some celestial song playing. A primordial ballad that crosses the space between fear and hope. There’s a jello-like ripple to actions you barely remember. The sepia-toned memories of a bygone version of yourself. One that’s been consumed by the larger matryoshka doll that your present self is.

Warp Speed

It feels like time has hit warp drive ever since tryouts. Every day has been packed to the brim like the first fountain soda after a baseball game. We used to call it a “graveyard” as we layered sodas over each other in the cup, creating diabolical mixes of sugar and advertising.

I’m back in the gym locker room in-between class periods as I listen to Andy Shauf on my phone. Half a thousand emails have been sent and received as I prep for the week, weekend, and the inevitable march towards athletic glory (we’ll see).

Tonight is the first night in ages where I’m not rocking a practice. It’s been since December since I’ve had more than just Friday off coaching. Instead I’ll be walking the pony boy, Huckleberry, around Irvington as I noodle on the next steps (that aren’t soccer related).

Islington Street Bridge

Tsar spent three hours counting motorbikes from the Islington Street bridge. A cool October wind made him shiver as the last rays of sunshine turned his shadow from that of a man to a nightmarish stretch.

The dreams hadn’t stopped for the past two weeks. His heavy lidded eyes betrayed a lack of sleep that PhD grads would be impressed by. A litter of coffee cups sat at his feet like eager puppies. The perch he nestled in was one of the last secrets his brother, Griffin, told him about before last years equinox.

The people below on the street moved like they were swimming through chowder. A fog had taken hold of the night and showed little signs of letting go. Tsar’ shiver had little to do with the wind as the fog continued to roll in. He’d need more than coffee to get through this night. He pulled out a bundle of scented sticks wrapped together in glyph-inscribed cloth. Power trickled off of it. His palms buzzed as he centered himself.

A whispered prayer hardly broke sound as his mind cleared. He could feel the approaching shapes swim through the clouds. So, that’s how it was going to be, he thought. High disguise and shitty weather tricks.

Go Eagles!

There’s a dank, musty smell emanating from the depths of the boys locker room at Eagle Crest High School. It’s the sort of puckered nose twinge of horror that basements with rotting vermin and half-chewed armchairs evoke. It was also the place I had to spend my weekdays.

I thought becoming a gym teacher was going to be an easy gig. None of the parent teacher meetings— I mean, what are you going to ask about if you’re a parent? “Why doesn’t my kid have an A?” It’s because they won’t dress down and refused to run the mile. No hard science there. No effort, no pass. Say your sorrys and give yourself over to the demonic creature that is the summer school P.E. instructor.

Late twenties and spiraling towards mediocrity, I thought a semi-permanent job that held the guise of a career would have been the ticket for me to rocket back up into relevancy amongst the go-getters. Spoiler—- it has not. That is unless you believe driving a 1994 Ford Escort wagon that’s the color of neon blue alien blood strikes desire. For heavens sake, the driver side door doesn’t even unlock from the inside. You have to roll the window down and open it from the outside. Nothing says “I’m really loving my life” like rolling that window down during a torrential rain storm and getting soaked before you step outside.

So now I’m debating the merits of signing up to become a home inspector. If' fate has already decided I’ll be sequestered to the shitholes of fading Americana towns, I might as well get paid a little extra for it. My daily Spaghet fund could use some cushioning after a blowout weekend in Reno left me heartbroken and itchy in places you don’t mention in polite company. Maybe I should inspect my own life before making a go at the homes. I’m sure I’d find I’m due for renovations.

Late Mornings Brightened by Sun Stars

I’m sitting at my new desk overlooking a former trap house/ chop shop. To my right is a dirty mirror left by the previous tenant and an orange sun star I bought at the store the other day. The info ticket said the flower can grow up to a foot long. The tiny little fronds frosted with bright yellow pollen might be making me sneeze a little extra, but the color is worth it.

I’ve had two mornings in a row where I’ve slept in. Curled up under the twenty pound weight of the gray weighted blanket that doubles as a dream innoculater. It’s been ages since I’ve had two days in a row where I didn’t have to immediately be somewhere in the morning.

I’ve tossed on my green leather banded pearl bracelet I received from the Kuta JHS staff. I remember standing before the assembled members like some departing son. It’ll serve as the high watermark for my Japanese ability as I described the past two years and how they’d come to shape me. I don’t know that I’ve ever given a speech with that much emotion in my life, let alone in a different language than English.

Yesterday I assembled my rotating bookshelf— I’m slowly putting together a white, wood, paired design eclectic sort of room that I’ve always wanted but have never had before. I feel like if you stepped inside this room you’d have a good handle of what sort of person I am. I don’t know if I can say I’ve had that before. Staggering it’s taken until thirty years old to get that sorted, but each at their own pace.

Sitting with my books to my back and an open window before me— I look forward to this coming summer. One in which distant stars seem quickly approaching.

Ramble

It’s been a sprint since the end of January towards May. The slog of practices, games, moving, returning to the classroom.

I find myself constantly in motion— the last time I cooked an actual meal was well over three weeks ago. The days take on a technicolor sheen as the slipstream casts me forward.

Small idle moments find me rediscovering memories like an old dog stumbling over a half-buried bone in the yard. When I step back from the immediate, I can see this vast arc I’ve been riding.

Even though I intellectually knew I couldn’t shield myself from the pain on the horizon, I still tried to hide from it. Instead of passing through it and out to the other side, I lingered in this foul malaise— like the Blob had undulated over my heart and kept me in a chrysalis of unfulfilled emotion.

I woke early today— laying on my brand new light blue rose bedsheets. The hard-fought futon I wrangled after four hardware store trips (WHERE WERE THE CORRECT BOLTS?!) stood steady (enough). It felt surreal how quickly a new change had happened— A quick scene change from the top floor of my parent’s house to a NE craftsman. The light shone through the windows (drapes still not purchased, but curtain rod holder purchased— baby steps). I felt exhausted— but in a good way as the regular week pulled to a close. I work today at a high school out in Gresham— it’s a half-day and the sun is shining.

This weekend the second team has a final for President’s Cup and the top team has a quarterfinal. The top girls team has a final for the President’s Cup as well. I’ll be stood out at Tualatin for a good four hours as I coach/ cheer the kids on. It’s funny how all the drills, team talks, and personal prep goes into making moments that will flicker like halcyon lights in your memory.

Next week is try outs for the younger kiddos— I’ll be coaching the 2018 boys group. I expect dinosaur noises, tears, tackles, and big hearts from the little lads. The following week I’ll be taking over the 2011 girls group. That group I have less expectations about what I’ll experience— but I look forward to the challenge of being an age group coordinator.

I’ll never escape the Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner) comparisons. Never Jacob from Twilight— always Shark Boy. I had a set of students whisper “Doesn’t he look like…?” “Isn’t that?…” It’s not the same energy as the Val Kilmer comments, but at least I’m saved from other critiques.

“I was never that far away.” A line stolen from a Mundial magazine about Nina Hagen and her lasting impact on the Union Berlin club that her status as a legendary punk rocker helped raise support for. The quote referred to her growing up right by the Alten Försterei stadium. It made me think of my own boomerangs back into Portland— specifically southeast. Even halfway across the world, I was never that far away.

I think in many ways we’re never that far from our roots. Not if we’re able to lean into the love. They can be a wellspring in darker moments. In the times where the path forward isn’t visible. That’s when you know you’re in new terrain. Where the brambles stretch across your way forward and you have to take the scratches with the progress. Or maybe it’s not progress— but simply an aspect of the journey. The pain can serve as a wake up call to return to the present— to exist beyond our mind that crafts oh so delicate realities— ones that are blown away like gossamer thin spider webs. The ones that have disappeared from the dewey mornings where you walked on rain-soaked concrete towards a towering brick school building that basked in the orange morning light like a awning lizard.

Maybe the purpose isn’t the point. Maybe it’s living in the moments.

Ebb ‘n Flow

Got the wrong bolts twice today

Moved in without throwing my back out

Caught a ball to the face that cut my nose and damaged my glasses

Got a locals tour of Broadway that ended with a killer Italian at Lottie & Zula’s

Light blue roses are the design of my new sheets of the new (old) bed in my new (old) house

I’m eating Al pastor enchiladas that cost way too much

But I learned there’s a tango class at the restaurant that served them

I live close enough to my sister to walk to her house now

Everything is flowing~~

Everything is changing~~

Everything is

The Velnic Sage

A gravestone stared back at me on the longest night of the year. 

A watermark etched the wall that stood on the edge of the cemetery as a forgotten sentry to the Samhain flood that covered the once prosperous village of Yestlin.

I rummaged through the pouch Safira gave me at the last town. Two silver coins, a red silk thread, a tigers eye stone, and a couple grains of salt. I dumped the contents onto the ground before the name “Haljmund” and carved a circle into the dirt with a sturdy stick. I’d waited long enough for answers. 

The dead know a peace the living can’t hope for. Tales of the restless dead don’t belong to truth. That doesn’t mean nothing moves in the night. 

The son of a cobbler and wandering performer, I wasn’t raised on stories of dragons and bouts of heroism. I didn’t come to this crossroads with fire in my heart or glory to be chased. 

I stood before the last Velnic Sage because I’d been raised honor honest men. Life taught me the fate a ruthless world had for them.

I’d read the accounts from the Wandering Sage as he strode past the wreckage in the Malton Court and through the Temari Plains. Learning about the exploits of Arkes and the due given to his threat had changed my life. It had been fifteen years since I’d held a proper set of pincers or leather cured for shoes.

Camp Welby Pt. 3

Gabe had forgotten how loud the wilderness could be. The dead pine needles didn’t completely muffle his footsteps nor distract him from the rustling in the bushes beyond the trail. Unlike the background hum of distant cars on the freeway or the muffled talk of passing couples at night underneath his street side window at home, the forest filled the air with noise.

Each step brought him closer to a nighttime rendezvous with Emma and the sinking realization that getting close to achieving a dream means it starts becoming a reality. And for better or worse, reality never goes the way you plan. Still, he wished the person he wanted to spend alone time with didn’t want to do it at the place he wanted to be least. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or the glowing green ghost stairs appear. Either way, Gabe kept on until he made it to the base of Cairns Point.

“You made it!” Emma said, jumping onto the path.

“Emma! God, don’t do that,” Gabe said struggling to catch his breath.

“What? You get scared?” She said poking him. “I didn’t think a camp vet like you would be jumping in the dark.”

Gabe rolled his eyes and kept walking. Emma bounced along the path beside him.

“I thought you were going to meet me up top.”

“Well, I was, but I didn’t realize how spooky it would feel being up there by myself. Besides, I figured the more time I got with you the better since you’ve been avoiding me since we got here.”

Gabe startled at that, but turned to see a small smile spread across Emma’s face. He’d forgotten how playful she was. And how much being back home caused him to fold in on himself.

Spring Caprain Striation

I dipped a tanned finger into the jar of honey that’s been sitting on my beside for half a year.

I’m rolling a bright red lacrosse ball between my feet as I look through my substitute teaching paychecks.

I started work at 8am and finished around 9:30pm. A small hour break in between as I traveled between field and school.

I’ve got two vocations and a job. Writing, coaching, and substitute teaching.

I’m currently sat on the tri-color blend carpet my parents installed upstairs a couple years ago. As the beat of the song plays in the background I wonder how it’ll be to live in a shared house in Portland that isn’t my parents or the condo.

I’ve given myself a year to see how this goes— the adventure that I’m already plans to pivot out of. To venture in new directions as the veil lifts from my eyes.

I’m shaking out the small, black rubber pellets from my shoes.

Tomorrow is Thursday- my last coaching day before the solitary day of rest (which Friday’s should never be).

I’ve been buying books like a madmen as I’m reminded of the beauty of public libraries. The scent of evening jasmine has flown through the air. The off-leash dogs have lunged— finding cloth where flesh might be. Unscathed, I venture forward—

Distal Relation

“He was a man for who smiles came easily and meant little. I did not encourage the pearly encores, but a showman to the end, he refused to stop.”

Blossom

With the scents of new growth

And dappled sweetness

I feel like I’m being woven back into the world with the arrival of spring

the weight of a sailor who had been destined for rocks lifted with bird calls and bright April light

I can’t replicate the tweets, caws, and yawning that fill the air. But they’re etched into my bones nonetheless

Lattice

Trying out for affection like he’d dived into bloodsport.

Starting a new religion and loosening the shoulders like the weight of consequence found a new conscience to rest upon.

Kept up on destruction so that I could procrastinate my salvation the next morning.

Loved you like a renegade priest discovering a new god

How many slurred “hellos” have passed between strangers?

It’s been a back dive where unfurled fears waited for me to smash through them like I’d become a mosaic artist.

Into Rest

Last night I laid down in my bed and stared death in the eye. It has this small that is face-to-face with you always. It’s one of our first great tricks to forget that it’s always looking at us.

We make up stories and explanations to comfort ourselves in the face of our inadequacy of understanding. We don’t know what happens to the energy. We do know that it isn’t destroyed, but we don’t know where it goes. And what goes with it.

I’ve thought about the dreams where people reach you and the feeling— weight itself in the dream is different when they are in it. That is no longer a flimsy thing Your brain has conjured, but something that has gone beyond you.

I believe this is what Memento Mori truly means. Or what it serves to teach you.

You cannot brush away the knowledge that death lingers beyond— and that we don’t know what it is, except for everything we know it is not.

For all my lip service, I had forgotten the single immutable fact.

I don’t get to do this again. Not like this. I will never redo this life.

Lazaro

I wonder if that small mint green Mazda AZ wagon holds all the screams that tore out of my throat over those two years

If I’m running out of guts to spill in an age of tenderness and rage

I’ve been taking sinfully long sleeps. I’ve yipped in dreams and woken myself in the witching hour

I’m soon leaving the corner castle of glass and steel— the unexpected bastion during my twenties

The palace of white leather and liquid empathy

Alessian

“In the age of tenderness and rage

On nights that went on forever

With winter so cold your spit froze before it hit the ground

All dead men are at peace”

-Excerpts from the Wandering Scribe

G

In a turn of waves I found myself on this shore. The horizon a faltering, distant thing. The orange dusk a faded relic of brother times.

Stretched out before me were blots of iridescent light hovering over dark waters. It brought to mind an alien invasion or another otherworldly horror. The kind you witness without voice, for reason departs in the face of abstract terror.

It didn’t feel real, nor does it now. You could tell me all that time was a dream and that I never left.

I walked under a light drizzle tonight as the clouds merged overhead in a rumpled configuration. I snapped a photo of cherry blossoms illuminated by the streetlight as Huckleberry tugged on the leash.

I thought of an orange dawn and the creative spirit. Of cowardice and love. I thought of half a thousand things as I walked down rain soaked pavement with the houses full either side of the street, but sidewalks bare.

I thought of old photos with departed friends and the nature of aging.

I thought of the pause before impact and the outsized power of small words.

I thought of driving home at three thirty in the morning and the navigation of morals and schedule. The belated wail of fire trucks and stepping onto the balcony to look at nothing much at all.

I thought of you and how the sun dips before you reply.

So I thought again of cherry blossoms and nothing much but everything at all.

Verge

On the verge of spring break, except I’m no longer in school. Now I’m waiting for the soccer season to end as spring transitions to summer and the rain gives way to silk lightened sun.

My sleep cycle is so far off that the mundanity of week days doesn’t clock my brain as I sleepwalk through the beginning of each morning.

Heartthrob honey baby, staring into X-rays wondering why I can’t see your soul.