Andrew: August 16, 1983
Tonight, I sat alone in the woods at the top of the hill looking down through the witch hazel branches at her. I could look into the kitchen, see all she was doing, shining the saucers, setting that house in order. She opened the farthest back screenless window, leaned out. All that way and into the dusk, I could see it, the way her lips moved, praying. I could hear her, plain as day. I cast you out, she shouted, her voice so terrible I could find nothing in it to call mother.
I hid behind the witch hazel, pressed my cheek to the smooth bark, a lifeline, a savior. Whatever blessless thing she had cast out winged past, touched the top of my head with a kiss and flew at the sky just as the sun went down.
I told myself I wouldn't believe anything about her, about Henry Ward, or the Lord, or witch hazel. How could she send shapes into the dark? How could she know whether blossoms had a scent for me, or whether love should or should not have a familiar face. I pulled down the highest branches, buried my face in the shiny petals. I wanted them to have a scent, something sharp and biting. I took the blossoms between my teeth and bit through their tastelessness, wanting to believe.
All my life, here, where things winged, blessed, merciless, are real. Where the world is a cusp, and I am left, holding on to the sharp edge. I am this, I am that, I love, I cannot. I must, I must not. How to name that place in between, the cusp of the world?
Tonight I, Andrew Wallen, who for all my thirty years am but a would-be, a pretender of intellect and spirit and heart, will not try to convince you of anything. I will quote no ineffable truth, no lofty passage from my most secretly read books. I will not talk of the unbelievable, of how to dream, how to escape today unscathed. I will only rarely hold my head to the wind and imagine the unimaginable, the distant and tantalizing scent of the ocean, a lingering sniff that I can savor, like warm salt on my tongue.