For my final 12 Sundays in Minneapolis, these sidewalks were a pulpit. I ran places you can only get to on belief, where robins bobbed dumbly through the grass and sinister blackbirds glided overhead, red eyes painted on their shoulders.
On the last day, I ran a sermon past the parking lot where my daughter was nearly born, though not quite to the parking lot where my son actually was born. I ran to where the muskrats are just a spot on the river and the birches bend just like Frost said. I felt my body give as I thought of the gallons of ink I gave this city, and the tides and tides more that would come to wash it away. Shores buried in an age that will come long after I’m gone.
And when suddenly the sun ascended from behind an iron-colored sky, I tried not to make a metaphor of it. But it did come, as I had been praying, silently to myself, between the paces. It came, and I made it have meaning, because everything was suddenly important, because the pulpit was illuminated, and I could watch as it disappeared. The trees spilled fuchsia snow across the street, a reminder that spring is a brief gift. So is everything.
A few hours later, the sun at its zenith and me finally showered and washed of these thoughts, I’m in my neighbor’s living room for a goodbye that should’ve been a goodbye yesterday but nonetheless is today.
“I thought we buried you?” Cody said as he walked into the living room, which used to be a porch, which used to be nothing. That thought doesn't feel urgent, like robins or tree petals. There's no divinity here, beyond the cat, who won’t stop plunging her snout into the queso.
I made dirty martinis because there was vodka to be finished before leaving. I poured three into Halloweeny tulips, and two more into old jam jars. We raised a toast. “FUCK OFF” we yelled, and these odd vessels were raised to lips that belong to friends I’d sooner call family. Everything was stupid, meaningless, glorious.
Again.
Words + Photo by Jerard Fagerberg