| the paint needs to be dry before we can sit on it my mother said and i just looked at her and stared and thought and disappeared inside my head and thought and looked at her and wondered and sat and wound up with the beautiful purple paint off of the fantastic bench i had just made and this beautiful yellow jumpsuit which had been handed down from some cousin twice removed on the second side of the family tree and now the whole back was covered with these spectacular streaks of purple and i was happy and she looked at me and i looked back and i prayed that she would glimpse my face and dissolve into laughter that as the sun rose the next morning as i was still on my knees not yet ready to ask for forgiveness that she would realize about the fantastic color purple and the hideous yellow jumpsuit that was now mine that now had my signature all over it and no one had told me to sit they had in fact said it wasn't quite the right thing to do but how did they know that and had they ever loved purple or made a bench that worked so perfectly maybe for them it didn't seem like the thing to do at the time but i did it anyway and if i did it and it was done then what good would forgiveness be because i wouldn't have done it in the first place if i was going to want to be sorry for it if i was going to have to renig on my doing didn't they understand that as those caterpillars i collected and stuffed into jars of fifty and sixty that i had really believed each one would live because i was willing it to be so and i still believed that my will was genuine enough to be done and that when i saw how slowly they were dying off one by one that even though they looked so beautiful and furry and warm that i still walked out to the forest and ignored the honeysuckle and walked to a place where i knew they could all survive with enough room and when you asked what i had done and i replied that i had thrown all the jars into the river couldn't you tell i was lying and enjoying the lie and the look on your face and i knew they were safe just as you know i will be just as i know i would love to be safe with you beside me that it isn't necessary but it would make things that much more wonderful like purple on yellow and a false death of two hundred caterpillars but there were rules that i wasn't following again and things which should have been said that i kept from articulating i knew what you wanted to hear and deep down i wanted to say it but there was a lot of other stuff connected to the saying of certain words and certain things that it was next to impossible just to blurt out what you wanted to hear and there are real things to think about like the color purple and the number of legs on a caterpillar and how many can be removed so that he can still walk again and how many of my legs could be removed so that i could still walk again and how many legs do i have to spare and you tell me all these things as if i don't know as if i don't understand as if the same doesn't grow inside of me and i could still sit here and wait on my knees till the sun comes up on my knees till you turn around and laugh on my knees till all the honeysuckle has been eaten and i know you hated that red clay from deep in the souther hills because it always ground into the clothes between the fibers and hung on like death so that all my jeans had blood red knees and all my t-shirts were varying shades of pink but you must have known that the only way to reach the jasmine and the honeysuckle the only way to check on my commune of caterpillars the only way to find a place to breathe was to climb up the hill which ran beside the bike trail and my pink huffy bike whisked me to that one place only i knew about and hide in the bushes waiting and watching while i climbed the hill you must have known that there was no other way you must have understood that it was never anything against you personally i proudly went around with stains on my knees and sleeves there was no need to scrub so hard and as i sit tonight and hear him play and i listen to the words and i know none of them are about me i still cry and my cheeks are wet like in the morning when i should be feeling sorry and i can't like how i should know what right things i am suppose to be saying but they have all been forgotten like when i hope that the look in my eyes is enough and the laughter is just because and i can't help it there are so many things to think about and i want to think about them all and know the answers to them all or at least have the right questions to ask |