Dill Weed

My dill weed is dead.

She bolted—cold-cocked by the heat.

It’s hot in the A. Not the sticky hot of August, but the oven has almost preheated.

Life is strange.

One minute your biggest worry is gettin’ picked at on the school bus.

189.

That was my bus number.

Even now, as a man, I can remember gettin’ off that bus in tears.

The kids knew what I was before I did. Before I even knew there was a word for it—

“Gay. Fag. Queer.”

So many names for a person who just wants to love somebody.

“One time too many,” that’s what momma said when she decided to pull the girls and I out and homeschool us.

I’m always quick to jump at her for the things she didn’t “get right,” but that was probably the best decision for me in those days.

That all feels so long ago.

When I look back in my file, I can’t always feel that boy anymore.

What were his dreams? What were his hopes for this world? I wonder.

Now he’s a man approaching 40, watchin’ the lemon grass wave in the wind on the balcony.

I remember when I came to the A 15 years ago.

I thought I had made it.

I was moving to this big, beautiful place.

I actually got to live amongst the buildings I remembered driving through as a kid.

I was so lucky. Still am.

I don’t know how I get to have this life, but I find sometimes, when I look at it through the right end, I wouldn’t change much.

Not even the bad legs.

Course, it don’t feel that way when you’re on the bad flip though.

Bonnie (my therapist) is always tellin’ me that all things are like a flipped coin—especially love.

The good and bad are this continuously spinning thing flipped by some thumb somewhere—

and we’re just on it.

Free-fallin’—

till we stop.

I like that. On the bad days it helps me remember I’m on the flip.

Unlike my dill.                                                                                        

She’s dead, honey.

Gone to seed.

But I’m gonna plant those.

We’ll see her again.