it’s been a long time

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since i’ve written.

since i couldn’t sleep -
long time meaning, in our new view of time,
weeks.

but here i am at 4am on a friday awake.

leanne was in bed next to me, and lydia next to her
and then me, listening.

i’ve been listening a lot lately.

—–

two weeks ago we heard 8 gunshots.

i got up and went to the window
and saw a car, all shot up and a boy
dragging himself in the street,
his white sweatpants mottled with blood.

two days after that, i heard a crash.

a man on our street
parked his car in his driveway.
he got out and somehow it rolled down, by itself,
and crushed another car.

and then on monday we heard sirens.

there were cop cars and a fire engine and a coroner
parked a few houses away.
our neighbor had killed herself.

this is the woman, who upon learning that leanne had cancer,
said:

i know exactly how you feel. i have fibro-myalgia.

we mocked her a bit.
ok, maybe a lot.

how could she have said this? we asked.

but what strikes me as true is that she probably did know how
leanne felt.

she knew what it felt like to have something eating you away
from the inside, out.

not the fibro-myalgia, of course,
but something else.

she was, in her way, trying to connect.

—–

so i’m awake tonight.
the first night in a long time.

i haven’t listened at night in a long time,
how i want to hear the trees turning red,
how they know exactly how to go,
how i can’t get used to the furnace turning itself on,
how i walked down the stairs and into my office
and browsed for a while,
not content to read about the Rockies winning in the desert,
how instead i chose to visit the blog of a woman
who i’ve written about before.

she’s the one who emailed us in the spring,
right after the post i wrote about leanne itching,
and how she read that and said she’d been itching since july,
and how she went to the doctor and she, too, had lymphoma.

there are few blogs i follow, but every once in a while i’d check in on her.

and the news was good.
she had practically the same thing as leanne, though, i don’t think it was as bad.
and she got a clean scan.

just like that.

even tonight when i went by there, i saw that she hadn’t written
since july, since that post about the clean scan,
and so i clicked on the comments.

and she’s dead.

the chemo had killed the cancer, yes,
but it had also killed her lungs
and though the cancer was gone,
she couldn’t breathe.

just like that.

—–

so tonight i’m writing.

i’m writing because i’ve listened for awhile and now it’s time.

i’m writing to tell you that i’m aware
of the “monstrously good dose of luck” we’ve had.

i’m writing because it is night again and i want to,
if only to let you know that leanne is still alive,

i’m writing to tell you
that it is so quiet tonight that i can, yes, even from downstairs,
hear her breathing,

that there was a reason for me to be awake tonight,

that the reason is to go outside, which i will do now,

and listen to the echo of the gunshots and the car crash and the sirens
and two women who have stopped breathing
and listen to the trees turn red
and exhale
and expire.

---

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