Note: This Is Possible

A special message from the head office:

Do you remember that day when you ran for the train? No? You squinted against the sun to cross against the light and your eyes looked like root beer, flecking brown and yellow as they pierced the middle distance? Well, then you must remember that strand of hair you tucked behind your ear just before you stepped off the curb. Your right ear. Your left foot. ...No? Your lips looked like they did on your deathbed, a little pale though a little painted on, and I thought: these are the lips that ate, that kissed, that formed air into expression; and then they pursed in anticipation of the evening and what must be done in its fading light. No recollection, huh? That's fine. I'll remember for you.

Remember how you sat restlessly in Algebra class, your adultifying body struggling against the confinements of the desk? Your face as inchoate as the volcanic ocean floor, every labored shift dislodging discomfort, and potential. No? How about your voice, filtered like a chained animal's, curbed to a taut coil yet ready to speak, to answer against its weight? Wow. OK then, try this one: Remember how you would eat lunch, your shoulders tightly hunched, your arms a gate, on guard? You would quickly sneak food into your mouth, and chew as if with shame? You would save your milk for the whole meal and drink it at the end without a breath. Hmm. Later you became a minister and nurtured a whole community with your patience and dedication. Oh, THAT you remember. All right. I got the rest.

Remember when you sat alone at the bottom of the stairs, underneath Michigan Avenue, right outside Billy Goat's? You looked so despondent, or high. Did you know you looked high? Drunk at the very least, and at 7 p.m. Maybe that's why no one came to help you, even though you looked so in need. You sat at the base of those dirty stairs with your hands covering your face and your hair covering your hands and you looked like someone whose whole spirit had been crushed. Remember? You thought the entire world was lost to darkness; you were falling, alone, with no hope of redemption. And now you don't even remember it. See? Sorry to bring it up. But see?

Do you remember that train ride out to your parents? It was Labor Day weekend and the light had already turned. Do you remember you had that red-penny hair then, thinning? You wore those thick lenses, it was before the surgery. You were thinking, "Can I do better than this one?" And everyone who knew you was thinking that, too. You were still wearing the leather, it was before it looked like an affectation, or more of an affectation. Your mind was absent but wandering, you were thinking of a dish with ginger, and of Tammy from college, and who was the actor in that show? You breathed in and out forty-eight hundred times on that trip and the Earth rotated five thousand miles. We were idols then. False idols, but idols nonetheless. No memory? It's OK, it will always be OK. You just stay on that train, and I'll meet you there.