Ralph's Photographs

Joe and Ralph are brothers,
and they inspire me--
what's possible.
It's like for Ralph,
everything is just a lens to focus love through.

Ralph took this photo
of my friend nikki
and the sun was shining through her purple skirt and her hair had flowers in it.
and i would like Ralph to photograph my sadness,
to catch me in a moment when it is in me
and the sun is shining through it
and what color would its skirt be?
and what its hair look like?

Tonight I was talking on the phone, to alex, about my childhood
and i said that if i read my life in a book,
i would cry the whole way through.
and even now, writing that,
i feel i need to justify it,
explain myself
to tell you sad, sad stories,
to write you a whole book that would make you cry the whole way through.

and what's so sad is that as a child
you think you made your sadness up,
like the games you play alone in your room,
and so does everyone else.
and so i feel like i'm still living to prove my sadness is real,
and until i completely believe it exists
and and it has a story to tell
and photographs to take
like a real, live human being,
like a ralph or a joe,
it won't leave me.

today, in the kitchen,
i was cooking and eating mango with my hands
and listening to this american life,
and the story was about a retarded woman,
who watched children's videos over and over,
and when her mother was dying of cancer
she made her a video to remember her by
but after she died,
the woman never watched the video,
and she forgot her mother,
who had taken care of her every day.
i was crying
over the sink
because my hands were dirty
and i didn't want to cry over the floor.
i guess it's good to remember
even small, sad things.

ralph showed me a video, tonight,
about physics,
and an important man being interviewed said the reason nuclear power is so powerful
is because it splits not just an atom,
but the center of an atom,
and if we could get to the center of that,
and the center of that,
the energy would be infinite--
the power at the center of the smallest thing.
i would like to commit this alchemy,
split, into love,
the center of my smallest sadness,
my sadness that is so ashamed it lives in my wisdom tooth,
the one that is aching and buried under my cheek bone,
or the birthmark i noticed tonight,
in the bathtub,
might be beautiful,
just to the right of the center of my chest.
i imagined it in a photagraph,
a portrait of it at that moment--
just my breasts and thighs above the water,
my face half-submerged.

and i thought of water as a surface,
a plane, like in mathematics or physics--
its own universe,
or new ground to walk on.
and it's Easter and Passover all at once,
and i thought of how jesus walked on water
and moses parted water,
split it in the center,
and i wonder how much sadness he found at its center.
and i wonder
if he believed in it.

i am going to write this as if i am sadness, for a moment, ok?
i am ana's little girl sadness.

i am sorry, i am sorry, i am sorry
i didn't mean to
i don't know how this happened
it was an accident
i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry
i'm scared i'm scared i'm scared
forgive me forgive me
i didn't mean to
run away from you
i didn't mean to make such a mess
to have knotty hair
to be so dirty
to cry so much
i didn't mean to forget to wear underwear on the swingset in my blue dress in the sun
and spend hours in my room rearranging doll furniture and drawing circles on the floor
it's just that i didn't know what else to do
i didn't mean to be so clumsy
and kiss all my friends
and tell secrets behind the tree
i am afraid of you
and i don't mean to be afraid of you
i find you in colors
i dream sad things
i wish you wouldn't sit so close to me
and say the things you say to me
you come too close to me
you violate me
but i don't have the words to say that
get the fuck away from me
i'm sorry i don't mean to say that
but it's what i want to say
what i don't have the words to say
go away, go away, go away.
i am afraid of you.