George Loved to Dance
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The Poem
George Loved to Dance
This is what messy looks like from the inside:ordinary.
A yard. A house.The specific quality of light on a Tuesdaythat arrived like all the other Tuesdaysand then didn’t.
I am the man on the lawn.Not leaving. Not arriving.Just standing in the particular stillnessof someone who has run out of the right directionand is waiting for the yard to suggest one.
The yard has no suggestions.The yard is doing what yards do —existing, quietly,without an opinion about what happened hereor who is responsibleor what comes next.I find this both infuriating and correct.
The house holds everything the way houses hold things —without judgment, without memory,without the specific exhaustionof having been the place where the thing happenedand the thing before the thingand the thing that made the thing inevitable.The windows are just windows.The door is just a door.This is either a mercy or an insultand I have not decided whichand may not before I leave this lawn.
There is a stranger at the edge of the frame.I did not put them there.They arrived the way certain knowledge arrives —quietly, after the fact,standing at the periphery of someone else’s ordinary devastationwith the neutral attention of someonewho has seen this beforeand is not alarmedand is not leavingand is not explaining their presencewhich is somehow the most alarming thing about them.
A stranger at the edge of the frame
They are watching me stand on this lawn.I am aware of this.I am pretending I am not aware of thisthe way you pretend on lawns, in houses,in the middle of the thing that everyone can seeexcept the person standing in it.
This is what messy looks like from all the parties:one person in the yard waiting for direction.One house holding everything without comment.One stranger at the edgewho arrived without being askedand is staying without being invitedand is watching with the complete attention of someonewho understands that the watchingis the only thing they can offerthat costs nothingand might mean everything.
The wheels fell off somewhere between the driveway and here.I didn’t notice when it happened.That is also part of what messy looks like —the not noticing,the continuing,the standing on the lawn in the ordinary light of a Tuesdaythat became the Tuesday without quite announcing itself.
The stranger is still there.I have decided they are not a threat.I have decided they are not a comfort.They are simply the part of the storythat arrived without being written —the witness I didn’t know I neededuntil they were already at the edge of my lawnwatching me stand in it,which is, it turns out,the only thing anyone can do for anyonein the middle of the ordinary extraordinary messof a life that is happening at full speedin all directions simultaneously —show up at the edge of the yardand stay.
George loved to dance
The house holds everything.The lawn holds me.The stranger holds the edge of the frame without flinching.This is what messy looks like from all the parties.
This is also, it turns out,
what held looks like.