‘not with a bang’

At too young an age, I learned to slip away. Silently. Seamlessly. Often – not always -accompanied by a return, until the act of returning, met with hardly a glance or remark, soon subsided into never returning at all. I am ashamed to say I slip out of people’s lives quite easily. I’d like to say the first time – the time that started all times – was not really my fault. But that’s a lie. I was disappearing and reappearing long before the time that started all times. I learned, hanging in the shadows, that when I was gone, even after when I reappeared, I really wasn’t missed at all. Maybe goodbyes were just hard. is what I tell myself as I shoved the last of my clothes into the two free suitcases Southwest allows me. That’s a lie, and I know it. I don’t say goodbye because in the end, I don’t think I’ll be missed. And I rarely am. Sometimes, I try to say farewell. To hug the other person. If not for real, with words or a look that say “Damn, I miss you. You really meant a lot to me. I couldn’t have survived this time without you in my life.” But my words fall flat. Instead, I wonder if people wonder why I’m weird. And the shame of being so out of tune with the way I “should” be overwhelms me until I’m preoccupied with the task of slipping quicker out of people’s lives to free them of human gravel I think I am.

There were a few times I tried to say goodbye. Phil and some dopey kiss on Frenchmen’s. And to think I never saw him again. Brooke and I, close to tears, on a Cali rooftop – acting like the distance that was to be wasn’t already there. Lying to Dani that I was needed at home when in reality I was sick of our short time together. No, I prefer goodbyes of the other sort. The middle finger through the air as I roll through town kind of goodbye. The casual piling of all my belongings in my sedan on a lazy afternoon and driving East with no destination in mind. Strolling through the halls of an abandoned office at night and saying goodbye, alone and out loud, to the years of memories I never got to have in those hallowed walls. You tell me which is the better way to go. Because I don’t know. All I know is that the going won’t stop. The irrational itch won’t allow me to stand still, to remain in place. Sooner or later, I will leave. Again and probably again. And if the crowds rise to meet me, then I will give them the grandest of farewells. Or I’ll slip out the back. I haven’t quite decided yet.

Raymond once told me, when I adamantly refused to attend a wedding, that my absence won’t be noticed. But my presence will make all the difference. I’d like to think that’s true as I pack my bags once again and board a plane in the dead of night to go some place new and far away. Maybe it’s not really about the leaving after all. Maybe it’s about finding some place where being there makes all the difference to the world. Or even to just one person.

This poem started out as an essay, but the words felt too curated and clean. I was quickly losing my original intention with the work, so I decided to make this a modern poem of sorts. Instead of just writing my feelings, I tried to let the letters, the sounds, the punctuation impart as much meaning as the words themselves. This poem is, in part, inspired by the writing of Donna Tartt and by Mozhan Marnò, who taught me how heavy a comma can really be.