History

Thursday, October 30, 2014

For Grandpa

This isn't about the fact that you died, it's just the time.

You let me choose from the walls of your mind one beautiful part that would be mine. You put your trust in me when I was only nine to pick the piece of you that would hang in my room to love while you were still alive.

Grandpa, how did you know to let me decide, and why?

These are the things that pull my strings and yes I mean my heart. Like the way you reminded me I had one. Like the purple glories that remind us it is morning. Or our dogs who won't forget to tell us when someone's knocking. Like the stories in movies that conclude in deeper meanings.

You reminded me.

With the slight of your brush you painted me a story.
The only problem is you never told me.

I can see the berry and the door and the bright striped orange walls but you didn't show me, what you saw when this piece was your glory.
Your genius came with no manual.

Grandpa, did you mean for me to decide?

Perhaps observing this portion of you is much more of an introspective process. Perhaps you intended for me to make personal progress.

Grandpa, how did you know I would need this now?

How did you know the gregarious ways of your isolation? How did you know that youth is a basket slowly woven only to be filled with the marbles that need recollecting, how did you know you would lose them?

You gave me more freedom than the claim our country clings to. You let me make myself, like you made up the walls that surrounded you. You showed me truth, as if it existed beyond our textbooks. You pulled me to a more glorious horizon, than the gale of a glen in ancient Ireland.

How did you know you were ready to abandon your beard and return to the great glowing state, like our favorite wizard on the stallion off to battle?

How did you know I was ready to handle? And not like the grips of my bicycle but like a mothers bleeding thoughts of a son who's only a piece of this wars many cattle.

Like you knew I would be okay with growing away from home, and that this beautiful piece that hung on the walls of your mind would help me be alone.
All my unanswered questions are a building storm, greater than the ones that hit New Orleans and Rome. And yet it's like you knew there was a calm to this blow, and by the art you created you'd show me the absence of cold and the glory of one.

I want to know what you thought when this piece was not mine but merely a plan for the walls of your mind like a blueprint for skyscrapers to climb, or the seas of inevitable tide, like those incarcerated and prepared on the stand to look them in the eyes while they lie, I want to know if my guesses were right.

But perhaps that's the beauty of unanswered questions. Or the glory of your legacy.

Grandpa, how did you know?

2 comments:

  1. But perhaps that's the beauty of unanswered questions. Or the glory of your legacy.

    Grandpa, how did you know?

    This post is so good. I love the last part, it just makes me think of the people in my life that just know what I need and they help. So good ☺

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