Ledger
for Carl
Item 1.
A motorcycle.
Not transportation.
A language.
Chrome could be trusted.
Bolts tightened when tightened.
Engines answered honestly.
Girls were more difficult.
⸻
Item 2.
One girl
said she loved you
at sixty miles an hour.
You told her
you preferred motorcycles.
She shook you
hard enough
to move both of you
out of the road.
Three months in the hospital
is a long time
to learn that gravity
has no opinion.
⸻
Item 3.
Your father arrived
with the sentence
he had been saving.
You’ll stop riding now.
No.
The crash
was not my mistake.
⸻
Item 4.
So he bought parts.
Helped you rebuild the motorcycle.
You asked,
Didn’t you hate bikes?
He said,
No.
Then he told you
about a morning before work.
A truck.
A motorcycle.
A helmet
rolling toward his boots.
He picked it up.
The head
was still inside.
After that
you understood
that fear
sometimes wears
the clothes of anger.
⸻
Item 5.
New Zealand
You went back.
The motorcycles
had disappeared.
Some dismantled.
Some sold.
Your teenage glory only remembered
by an empty garage.
⸻
Item 6.
You bought a quiche.
The bakery wall
had a hole in it.
The woman behind the counter said,
Your brother.
A motorcycle.
A wheel in the wall.
Last week.
Sometimes
families leave signatures
without intending to.
⸻
Item 7.
The bank.
Negative dollars.
Apparently
money can continue travelling
after you have run out of it.
No one had mentioned this.
⸻
Item 8.
A friend.
A pub.
When you came back,
No car.
No cash.
No friend.
Only a sack of potatoes.
The road to Melbourne
is longer
when dinner
keeps repeating itself.
⸻
Item 9.
A girl
who brought you here.
Gone.
Another
whose family
preferred cleaner shoes.
Gone.
Another
who admired your father
more than you.
Gone.
A wife
who felt guilty enough
to recommend
that you betray her back.
Gone.
⸻
Item 10.
A game.
You were waiting for a friend
who never arrived.
I was inviting a friend
who was not you.
My finger made other arrangements.
Your character appeared
where my mistake opened a door.
We played.
Then we stopped playing.
We stood in base camp
while the monsters waited politely outside.
You told me things that
had nowhere else to stand.
A list of incidents
had begun
to become a story.
⸻
Without asking permission
everything
started making sense.
Because one day
there was finally
a destination.
You said,
Everything
that happened to you
led you
to me.
⸻
Now
I make you drive
a Kia Carnival.
I say
there is more steel
around your head
this way.
I never tell you
that once in a while
I still think
of a helmet
rolling across a road,
still carrying
everything
your father
could not bear
to lose.
⸻
Happy anniversary