The Music of What Happens(67)
His face lights up. “Yes!” he says. Betts and Kayla and Zay and Pam have kept walking, and we’re fine with that. We can find them later.
“You got a poem?”
He looks so happy. That makes me smile. Jordan has changed quite a bit from the emo dude I met a month ago. He radiates now, and that makes me feel good. I’m Super Max. I have the power to transform people.
He flips through his phone. “I sent myself one yesterday,” he says. “I think it doesn’t totally suck.”
“People love poems that don’t suck,” I say, and I tap the woman on the shoulder and ask if I can borrow some chalk. She smiles and hands me a variety of colors and points to the ground next to her, inviting me to join her in making the street beautiful. I thank her, kneel down, and touch the sidewalk. Even though it’s nighttime and the sun has been down for a couple hours already, the concrete is hot hot hot. I can touch it for like five seconds and then I have to pull my hand off. That’s how powerful the sun is.
Jordan kneels down and says, “Did I tell you about that poem my dad liked?”
I remember something about that while we painted the truck. I nod.
“So basically I looked it up. It’s by Seamus Heaney, this famous Irish poet. Can I read it to you?”
I nod, and I sit on the hot concrete, savoring the heat emanating from the ground through my shorts.
He reads:
“A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens.”
I look up at him. He’s staring intently at me.
“I like that,” I say. “I don’t get it, but I dig it. I wanna draw the trees.”
Jordan shakes his head. “I haven’t read you my poem yet. That one influenced mine.”
“Oh,” I say, and for just a tiny sliver of a second, I’m uncomfortable. Because people are gathered around now. I am sitting on the ground, ready to draw, and they listened to the poem Jordan read, and it was good. What if Jordan’s poem isn’t? Will I have to lie to him and tell him that it is?
Jordan’s eyes read fear, and I realize he’s reacting to me saying, “Oh.” So I smile wide, swallowing down my own stuff.
“Go for it!” I say. “I wanna hear.”
He smiles tentatively, and I give him an encouraging nod. My boyfriend the poet. It’s cool, really. I dig it.
“I call it, ‘The Music of What Happens.’ After the last line of the Heaney poem.”
He reads.
“Down the street from me
Ms. Carter douses her head
The shower pulses
And spits her sins down the drain
Next house over, with the red plastic Adirondack chairs Mr. Simmons cries while eating waffles
His sink bone dry
Dishes with dried-up barbeque pork and oatmeal pile high Mowing the front lawn next door
Jimmy Fowler dreams of Jenny Carmichael
And her fantastic tits
Mr. Torres in his two-story mini-palace
Sits on his bathroom throne
His waste meeting Ms. Carter’s sins somewhere Under Carriage Lane
Here and there
We
Eat blueberries out of a ramekin
Chat with strangers about the sex we won’t be having Read fake news about the end of the world
Peer over our shoulder at the pimple on our back Check our breath for rampant bacterial stench Straighten the family portrait, the one where Kim grimaces for some unknown reason Dream of a better street
Ignore the sewage below our feet —
Which shows that we are human, and that’s the worst — And soon there is a knock on Ms. Carter’s door She answers, her hair in its final bun, her smile pasted on Like a child playing with Elmer’s
And the man asks
Can I climb your palm tree
And knock off the dead fronds
And she nods, because he is saving her life
And she says, as if it’s nothing, ‘Sure.’ ”
People clap. Jordan blushes. I tear up.
He’s beautiful. My boyfriend is beautiful. I don’t understand the whole poem, but there were so many images, and I think I get it in general. The way we’re all connected, like he said when we were painting the truck. It tingles up my midsection, that I am truly connected to this guy. To my friends, even though they’re, you know.
Even though, yes, this bad thing happened to me. And Kevin is a bad person. A user and abuser, as my mom would say. But not everyone is bad. Jordan would never hurt me like that, and in that moment I realize we don’t have to go slow anymore. He’s not Kevin.
I stand and go over to the woman with the chalk. She’s stopped and listened, and she is beaming up at Jordan too.
“Can I borrow a navy blue?” I ask, and she searches for one and puts it proudly in my hand.
“Your boyfriend is a real poet,” she says, and I nod.
“Thanks,” I say. “He is.”
I go back and start drawing a white ramekin. I close my eyes and picture how the ones we have in our kitchen have these ridges on the side. Then I start adding navy blueberries inside. I shade them with just a touch of black, like a shadow.