I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
When it gets green like this in all honesty I hardly know
what to do with myself.
I’ll wander to the 88 bus stop
like a drunkard
scattering footprints like rose petals, running my fingers
along your chainlink fence.
I am envisioning diving into your perennials.
I am laying face-down in your lawn.
I’d like to throw
my face
into the divine leafy bosom of your shrubbery
and go “tthhhppppptttth!”
We’d taken a Friday ferry in and had spent the evening chasing a glow-in-the-dark frisbee on the beach, the ocean pushing in and pulling away, wet stones rattling like long-buried skeletons. Everything was quiet and fading except for us. I disappeared briefly through the tall grasses to explore a pile of discarded bridges in the hazy parking lot, taking pictures of soda machines.
Every morning and night a translucent white fog would envelop the island, and I would declare to no one in particular “isn’t that beautiful?” or “why don’t we buy that abandoned lighthouse” or “I’d paint all the doors red.”
Full album of Block Island adventures here.
1.) Humor is recommended. Now is your time. No one will ever find you more hilarious than in this moment. You’re bleeding from the head. You’re curled up in the grass on the side of the road. The details of your injuries and what happened exactly is being shared with passing motorists and a gathering crowd of horrified children. “Hi there!” you holler, waving a bloody hand.
It’s not even a joke, really, but even the six-year-olds begin to chortle with glee. Ha. Ha. Ha!
2.) All men want to do is pick you up. Then, preferably, carry you someplace useful, but if they haven’t figured out where that is yet, that won’t prevent them from getting started. If one man is already picking you up, another man may join in. There is in fact no limit to how many men that may try to carry you at once, nor to how many locations they suspect may be more ideal.
3.) Your bones are awesome. A moment of silence, please, for your rockin’ bones. “How did you not break your nose?” someone asks. “The way you were laying there, I really thought you’d broken your arm,” says another. Personally, there had been a time when you’d been convinced all of your ribs had been destroyed.
“. . . Yoga?” you reply.
4.) The picture didn’t even come out! What the fuck! That is some serious bullshit!
You joke to others that because what you were doing at the time was so stupid, there is no sense of injustice, no anger at a higher power. But you fail to mention this fucking shit.
Seriously. What. The. Fuck. You could have destroyed an entire ribcage for that picture.
5.) All memories of this are auditory. You will have flashbacks of the accident, as you have flashbacks of everything — you tend to spend a lot of your life reliving. But contrary to everything else you have envisioned over and over, angles of sunlight and looks in the eye, none of these memories will be visual. You like to think it’s your indie-radio-producer-arteest self announcing its presence, but more than likely it’s due to the fact that your eyes were closed at the time.
Crack, crunch, crack, crack, crack. So much gravel and pavement! So much plastic, metal and bone! That is your helmet dragging on asphalt. That is your face hitting the ground. That is your hip and that is your hand, those are your sunglasses and clack goes the bike.
6.) And so, every time you think of it, you remember it as if your bones are breaking. And so when you remember it you tend to grab yourself by the arms, as if your whole body could fall apart this very minute. You run your tongue over your teeth.
7.) Three seconds later you’re back in reality, and if someone were to ask you if you’d ride your bike again you’d scoff. “Are you kidding me?” you’d say. “I was doing the stupidest thing I could possibly think of doing on a bicycle, going as fast as I’ve ever gone on a bicycle, and look what happened to me: scrapes and bruises. I feel safer on a bicycle now than I ever could have before!”
The weird thing is, it’s true. You just need to buy a replacement seat, and a new helmet.
8.) Call your parents before you blog about it. You know, I can’t believe I even need to say this one. I assumed we were long past this; sometime around the days you learned not to blog disparagingly about your boss’ children — the umbrella rule being, “people read the internet (p.s. act and write accordingly).” Why don’t you put that in your pipe and relive it?
First of all, Block Island in May is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s neon green, wood-shingled, sleepy with fog. At nighttime the ferry rests at the New Harbor pier with its lights on, glowing in the mist like a phantom Titanic. Jed, Alexys, Keegan, Kelly, Jurvis and I came to spend the weekend riding our bicycles around its wee circumference, soaring up and down hills, around bluffs and beaches and paint-peeled barns. And it was lovely.
But the moment I went airborne, I knew what was coming.
I was snuggled on the couch and spying on my handsome boyfriend, who was sitting at the table in the other room and finishing dinner at the time. Look at that guy, being all handsome, I thought, as he took a gulp of water. Look at him, drinking that water. Look at that olive complexioned neck. Look at those bear-heaving shoulders. What a beautiful thing. That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I wish that I carved statues, so I could carve a statue of this man, eating dinner like that.
Jurvis turned to face me, tilting his head. “I am going to poop rice krispie bars,” he announced. “Fully formed.”
“. . . What? Don’t look so disgusted. I know you’re impressed.”