Antlers Blog

I pray for you, the future gunmen of America, I pray for you.

Somewhere in this country there is a boy or girl reading the news with a glimmer of envy in their spirit. A deep unrest in their being. They are hurting, they are silent, and here has presented an opportunity to be heard. They are watching this national tragedy unfold as a victory.

On July 20th of this year, Adam Lanza watched the news of the Aurora shooting on television, the same way we watch the Sandy Hook shooting now. Today, someone just like Adam is watching the news. They are not yet a tragedy. There is still hope for redemption.

We must choose to celebrate the victories of the hurting, over turning their failures into celebrities.

I pray for you, the future gunmen of America.

I pray that you find your peace. I know you are hurting. I know you are silent. I promise you, there are more powerful ways to be heard than firing a gun. I pray you hear the laments of the families in Connecticut. I pray you hear the hearts of this nation.

We are confused and lost, but we want to help you. As a country, we do not yet know how, but we are willing to learn. Have patience with us. There is an awkward dance in figuring out who we are as a people. Do not answer our own silence with more gun shots.

Many of us carry tragedy in our hearts. Creating loss does not absolve the pain you carry. Hurt only begets hurt.

I pray for you. I love you because you exist. I love you because you are fighting the same fight I do. I love you because you hurt like me, you dream like me, and you carry a weight in your heart like I do. Like we all do. I promise there is peace for you. There are hills and valleys to this life and I pray you can find rest without having to take it from someone else.

Peace be with you, whoever you may be.

was the year of gasoline and dirty motels. The year of less showers and more sex. The year of difference. The year of lessons in less is more. The year of too much beer and not enough poetry. The year of falling deeper in love than I already was. The year of 20 states and 15,000 miles. The year of goodbyes. The year of part art, part magic. The year of loving myself too much. The year of realizing it could be worse. The year of the postcard. The year of the coffee shop. The year of free wifi with free refills. The year of finding closure in open doors. The year of trying too hard to run away. The year of coming home and knowing it. The year of God playing with his food. The year of finally feeling full.

You show me your breasts for the first time and I cry. This is how I know I am still honest. Horny, but still present. Real life is not so pretty it can put its shirt back on and forget.

We make tragedy of love in a quiet motel somewhere in central California. Here is where I realize how loosely we can define the word abstinence. 

Absence,  they say, makes the heart grow fonder, but we fight so much more when all we have are phone calls and I feel like the better parts of my body are lost  in Texas with you. It is now that I believe I mean really believe that sex is best served sacred and it feels two years too late.

I sit alone with a bagel and iced tea three days since talking to you. This is when I stopped calling it  hungry.

We are everywhere and  nothing.

There are entire rooms in the hospital of my body I have not slept in since you left me. There are sick white hallways inside of me, that I still look for you in.

When you told me you were sick, I laughed like a junior high, like my mouth was a middle school dance. I laughed like a locker room, like a wet towel keeps the smoke in. There is nothing I can say to make you better.

You look so beautiful in baby blue. How dare you look so damn ravishing in a cotton hospital gown? The doctors called you the prettiest cadaver they’d ever seen. I called you “love me with the lights on” swore you’d never have to kiss the dark from my face. On my good days, I’m still changing light bulbs.

When you told me you were sick, I waited for the punchline, for the creak in your voice and the crack in your smile. Hoped to God you’d suck the words back in.

I threw my hand into a floor length mirror, threw my Bible off the Huntington Beach pier. The doctors called you a walking miracle, said I should be thankful for the weeks you fought for.

When you finally stopped calling it sick and admitted you were dying, I kissed the words from your mouth, held you in like the baby blue.

There are places in your skeleton you do not speak fondly of.

Hide them in your closets, like the mangos in your pantries,  let them rot. You are not a bumblebee keeper  nor a farmer raised on road kill so keep the nothing from your pantry, unplug the refrigerator, leave the kitchen to the dust and the barn owls  and the field mice. Hide your canned goods and caramel jams in the cellar. Remind your mother where the keys are, third drawer from the cookie jar, never unlock it. There are ghosts down there. You must promise to never unlock it. Swear to me you will swallow the key, that you will never miss the school bus bell. At show and tell you brought your whole family dressed as dust mites. The girl in the third row cried with her eyes closed, she didn’t believe you that they were only rabbit bones. On the way home you drank Kool-Aid through the gap in your front teeth, laughed at your father’s earring and necktie. A ghost cross-dressed as your mother threw herself at the interstate. Your father hit the breaks like his first wife, the truck hit your mother like his second. You bit styrofoam and plastic as the airbags painted the bucket seat red and chalky. Thick like your lungs, nervous like a stillbirth.

This is the part where you undress. Say “I love you” with a mouth full of food. Spit out the words like a loose hair.

Be civil. Wipe the corners of your mouth.

Tell everyone you went further than you did.  Ruin her reputation like her bed sheets. She can no longer sleep here alone. She fills your side of the bed with condoms and other boys and clean bed sheets.

Convince her that she asked for it, remind her you did nothing wrong.

Tell your friends that it was easy.  She unfolded like a dinner napkin.

When they ask if she was a lady, tell them you have never heard the word.  Convince them you only speak boxer sweat. Say she is fluent in keeping her mouth shut.

Be civil. Wash your hands before you eat.

This is the part where you get dressed. Gather her things from the foot of the bed. Say “I love you” like you bit your tongue. 

When my soul floats away to some distant pinprick in the galaxy to rebecome stardust and the protagonist in God’s recurring dreams, do not question if we ever fully understood love. We were eternal children but we hurt enough for lifetimes of longing and relearning to be still in each other’s presence.

Love is a quiet patience shared between two restless spirits.

If I ever die without you, throw your lips against the telescope. Point your ring finger to Heaven and follow it to the last place we said “I love you.” Smash your shins against the foot of the bed. Bite a hole in your steering wheel. Kiss every mirror in our house.

The only way to love a lost lover wholly is to keep loving yourself holy. You are not too full of holes to be filled. You will feel cup half empty but you are so full of grace it is seeping from your eyes. When you cry yourself to sleep the first night I’m gone, know that it was you who made me feel whole not the other way around.

Like the old coins and bread crumbs,  I want to find you tucked between my couch cushions when the rain has me so lonely,  I go looking for you in the only place I know you’ll be.

You are hand knit and fresh brewed.  All wool socks and tattoos.  You are small town pretty,  a lighthouse in an old Texas dust bowl.  You are long road rest stop, dark sky and bright stars. You are peace and true quiet,  the place I leave my permanence when I feel held down by this life of hiding.  You are the body I call home,  so when I drive too far to turn back I don’t feel gone, just drifted.

You have built entire lives on the idea of running, entire families on the absence of home.  Can the open road really hold you like those couch cushions could? Of course it would if you’d let it., of course I would if you’d let me.

Quit hiding so hard. Just let it happen like it always will.

Press your tongue against the metal coil. Consider yourself so electric.

7 Bat your lashes into the Chardonnay. Hold eye contact for no less than 15 seconds. Woo yourself into your own bed.

8 Assassinate the orchestra.

9 Stop kissing boys and/or girls for security. Don’t worry about the next twelve hours. Pull a wet song from the dryer and wear it like a bow tie. Clean your throat in style. 

10 If your body is an heirloom, leave it for your grandchildren chipped, spit out, and dust bowled. Give them something well-loved for Show and Tell.

11 Quit hating yourself so hard. We are all monsters in makeup.