LIMINAL.

 @pinecloned !

his presence has become familiar, almost  /  a comfort  /  in your home, against the river-bank  /  of your imagination. alone, in a dimension that is not  /  his, you invite him to your home for christmas, for the long holiday week leading up to it, you and your brother off school the whole week. give him a makeshift guest room in the attic, blow-up  /  mattress, heavy comforters for the new england winter. he comes to the breakfast table and you hand him the milk;  /  he makes you laugh when your parents can’t coax it out of you.

you welcome this man  /  not just into your life, but into  /  your family.

now, today, greg wears a gaudy sweater and complains about the heat from the fireplace, insists  /  on sitting too close. you sit between the tree and the sofa, your legs tucked beneath you, handing out gifts  /  reading the labels  /  smiling  /  smiling. holidays  /  yes, this year, they are hard, thanksgiving  /  and the long run into christmas. the snow melts and the rivers  /  run high, and you do not look out  /  the car windows, just wrap your scarf  /  tighter  /  around your neck, pull your hat lower. the holidays come  /  and come  /  and you see lantern-light in the christmas  /  angel atop the tree, in the lit-up houses. you keep your head down, but between greg  /  and tyrone  /  it has been almost bearable. 

the family threatens to stifle  /  and yet doesn’t, even greg  /  muted  /  this winter. but your brother still rises to hug your parents,  /  you,  /  after every present, so you do, too.

the tree lights threaten  /  a headache, the fire, the overhead, so you rest your head against the arm of the sofa, where tyrone  /  is sitting. and then, at a lull  /  in present-giving,  /  you feel something brush your shoulder, a wrapped gift. his hand on your shoulder. you glance up,  /  smile,  /  warm, suddenly, beneath your ribs, as you reach up to take the offering, hands brushing. 

aware of his eyes on you, you always  /  as nervous about unwrapping as you are  /  about giving, about giving  /  wrong.  /  you peel back the tape, the paper, find yourself holding  /  a book, thicker than any poetry collection  /  you own. you have told him your dreams  /  of making yourself as a poet, shown him your work, nervous as he read it. how he knows you.

your eyes skim the poems as reverently  /  reverently  /  you turn the pages, fingers drifting over the text. imagining, maybe, the notes you’ll take, the phrases you’ll underline  /  or circle  /  or doodle hearts beside. and the pages thoughtfully  /  blank, bright canvases. as though tyrone believes you can hold a candle to the author. and you are smiling,  /  again,  /  at him, fully beaming.

               He’s not certain, but Tyrone thinks Wirt might be telling him something without fully saying it, revealing some secret without an explicit explanation. What exactly it is, he doesn’t know, but something tells him he’ll figure it out.

                  A halloween party – just another similarity. Of course, Tyrone has his own… mixed history with parties like that. He’s mostly over it, he tends not to milk his own tragic origin story anymore. Still, it sounds like Wirt’s party was the catalyst for everything that’s happened, and though Tyrone doesn’t know everything… he’s close. 

                   But he has to stop thinking about it like an investigator, a researcher. He’s not Ford, he’s not Dipper. The journal he’d kept all through his travels long since completed, and with no intention to continue it, Tyrone’s changed his way of thinking. Find your purpose, find meaning, there is a REASON you’re alive. 

                   It’s a change of lifestyle he’s still adjusting to. But he’s happy, and in love, and maybe that’s why he’s more compassionate than he’d ever been as a kid. 

                   Wait – change of lifestyle, huh?

                   So are you? Are you living?

                   “I guess I am, yeah.” But maybe it’s not a good comparison. Tyrone’s has lived a fuller life than most people ever do – and at the same time, an uncountable number of lives. It all depends on how you look at it really. But all those adventures, all the worlds he visited, all the people, it had all come together for…. nothing. Nothing except ten years in a lake and an end that was just out of reach. He’d never really gotten what he wanted. Is this better? He’s not sure.

                   “But I’ve had some really unusual stuff happen to me, Wirt. Besides, y’know, the realities of my existence.” Is it a prompt for Wirt to continue to share more? Maybe. “Nothing about my life is the norm. You can’t try to compare everything about what’s going on with you to my experiences. I can only be someone to listen. Someone to tell you that you aren’t totally crazy.” He smiles, even though Wirt can’t see him. 

                   “I spent so long wanting to not live, and now that I do want to, I’m trying really hard to…. I dunno, embrace it, or whatever. I’m not put-together. I guarantee you I’m literally the messiest person you’ll ever meet, all my friends are in different dimensions, half my family doesn’t know I exist, and my boyfriend’s a demon, but I’m taking things one day at a time and yeah. I am living.”

                 He’s quiet again, listening to the sound of the silence, the absence of running water, and he’s grateful for the noise of nothing. And his mind jumps back to something Wirt said a few minutes ago – something that sticks out. “Woodsman’s lantern?” he prompts, softer than before, it’s just a gentle curiosity, an invitation for Wirt to say more, only if he wants. “You said you’re a poet, is that a metaphor for something?” 

                He doesn’t know how poetry works. He’s not even sure he’s read a single poem in his life. 

                “Or did something else happen? Between falling into the river – and the hospital.”

                As soon as he asks, he’s pretty sure he’s overstepped, and he grimaces – if the other shuts down now, he’s done, and that’s it, it’s over. He shifts on his heels, prepared to stand up and go. But he thinks back to being in the lake – the scattered memories that he’s still trying to piece together. What he saw, or didn’t see, the thing Bipper still won’t tell him, and the answer he thinks he knows. Something happened, something he refuses to share. Tyrone should bite his tongue, but he doesn’t, because he can’t. 

               “What did you see?”      

tip your head back  /  and sigh. he sounds --------------- so sure of himself. a little weary, worn  /  at all the edges, but content. you want to be like that  /  one day. one day, when the water  /  is not one step  /  away, one day when you can breathe without choking  /  on your own breath. you want to say you are  /  living  /  but you have never truly lived, have you, poet boy ?

and then  /  he finds the gaps you hadn’t realized you’d put  /  into your sentences, a mention of THE UNKNOWN. you say,  “ i --------- well. ”  late nights  /  with greg, him sitting on your bed, you  /  on the hardwood desk chair, his nightmares keeping him awake, and you  /  with soda on your bedside table. he holds your frog, his toes peeking out beneath his pajama legs, working through what  /  happened. he dreams  /  and he is back there, wandering, adventuring  /  through the woods. you have nightmares  /  of fluorescent eyes. or maybe  /  it is the other way  /  around.

WHAT DID YOU SEE ?

it is not  /  a demand, and yet a sharp ice-  /  cold slips down your arms. you look down and see  /  gooseflesh. imagine a hand  /  under the fluorescence, reaching  /  for yours, and hold it tight. he has told you his  /  story. you are safe. you are safe. you say :  “ i guess you could say that. it’s ------ ”  bury your face  /  in the shower curtain, your voice  /  muffled.  “ it’s complicated. ”  take a deep breath. shiver.

“ it was dark. i didn’t know i was underwater. ”  you are glad, now  /  more than ever  /  for the buffer of the door, for the shower curtain  /  around your shoulders. your voice hangs heavy in the air. you want to swallow every word, but you force yourself to keep going.  “ if greg didn’t insist on talking about it, i might not even believe it had happened. except i keep dreaming. i keep seeing it with my eyes closed. ”  hearing it, even, a smooth baritone promising  /  darkness  /  darkness  /  the light in your eyes snuffed  /  out.

talk and you are choking, talk  /  and you are slipping on a muddy hill, in the dark, your brother’s hand slipping out of yours. or maybe  /  it was never there. maybe you will always be  /  alone  /  on the bathroom floor, parched tile, too bright. use fluorescence to drown out  /  your own shadow, your own  /  voice. 

“ i didn’t imagine it. i know i didn’t. greg remembers it, too. ”  despite everything  /  tyrone has told you, you still sit here, justifying  /  your memory.  “ wherever we were, it was here, it was right here. it wasn’t like, i dunno, going to heaven or anything. being called into the light. it wasn’t like being transported. it was right here. ”  in the space between one breath and the next, the way dreams are.  “ i can still see it if i look at the maples wrong. we were in a wood just like this one, all the right trees. we were trying to get home. ”  i think i am still trying  /  to get home. i am home  /  and i do not recognize  /  my front door.

“ and the woodsman, he --------- well, he was a man with a lantern. he saved us. ”

you stare at the door, where tyrone’s voice  /  has fallen silent, letting you speak. letting you  /  unveil every hidden horror in the three seconds between slipping out of consciousness  /  and waking to water  /  in your lungs. you rise, pulling the shower curtain across your chest, awkwardly, your legs stiff. it falls from your shoulders, clumping on the tile behind you, unseen,  /  forgotten. a weight,  /  lifted,  /  literally. don’t say  /  anything, don’t let him know how close you are  /  to opening  /  the door, to letting out the stifled  /  air. you listen  /  to your own breath. you rest your weight against the door, one hand flat  /  to the painted wood, the other loose  /  on the handle, on the pushed-in  /  lock.