The iceberg you don't see.

My phone rang on the way in and he spoke to me in whispers, confidential tones, and my bottom dropped out right there on the highway. I played Stronger in a continuous loop all the way in as if the lyrics could bolster my courage through some kind of fucked up osmosis. Got in, got changed, and went to work on a case that had almost been thrown away by laziness and complacency.

The irony of it.

Then a text message and a secret meeting and the look of concern in eyes that I'd never seen worry before. Just how deep in this am I? It felt like someone had ripped through my chest and pulled my heart out, still beating. A black hole in the pit of my stomach.

Then the official meeting and the announcement that there might be lay-offs and they didn't know how many and they didn't know just what it all meant. Not yet. Just don't panic, don't panic. I fixed myself to the wall in the back to keep from falling, to keep from letting the chink in my armor be visible to any one of my brethren. There can be no weakness, not here.

And I tried like hell to make it out alone, to just get back to my car and hit the mean streets and resume the only piece of normalcy that I knew, the only answer I had for myself, my job. But it didn't work. First it was my Lieutenant and everybody clustered around and the don't worries, don't panic, we won't let this happen. Then the Captain, then my bargaining reps, and then my guys, we road dogs, my brothers, all. I could feel my eyes getting red and welling up and when I saw JD I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. The weakness coming not slowly but in waves that I could not control. I hit the door and didn't look back.

As soon as I called clear the salt water stung my cheeks in hot streams of devastation, disbelief. And just as soon I got a call and was thankful for at least a purpose. My phone blew up and I tried to ignore it because the love and support hurt even more than the terrible possibility of the meeting's news.

And of all days this was the one that they chose to get dinner in my bailiwick. I rolled through, stopped and parked. Looked at myself in the rear view and told myself to put on your game face, you have one hell of a battle ahead. All the while I talked to them and then later showed them my car I wondered how the hell I would ever be able to give them the news. I want to be just like you. I want to just go out and do what I'm meant to and now there might not even be that.

At a junction. Are you going to be strong enough? But I already know the answer. It's the waiting that is absolutely killing me. If I could just know what is going to happen, if I could just make a plan.

In the meantime there is prayer. God put me on this earth for a reason and I have to make good on it. Not like all the other names that are so often in red on my MDT screen.

St. Michael, guide me.

Ice and glass.

Plastic scraping on ice and glass and the sound of tires on a wet road. The world moving slowly awake and people digging out their cars from all of the night's ice and snow to snake listlessly towards work, or home, or yet another day of one foot in front of the other. We lay still and tangled, and for a moment I thought that if I was quiet enough and did not move that time would cease its constant push forward. The bed was warm and his scent lingered on a fortress that I made of pillows, greedy for every last piece.

Bourbon the color of amber, sweet and warm on the tongue. We circled each other like wolves and made an offering of our own vulnerability. A bittersweet tenderness that does not exist often between our kind. We vacillate between hunter and prey and sometimes the lines are so blurred that we exist in both roles at the same time. His eyes sparkle even in hotel darkness and the words were precipitated by a deep breath and a long hesitation. Yes? I say. Yes. Yes.

Once loosed we two flow like water through a new level of communication. As if every word, every touch, each heart beat contained some secret code necessary for a future mission, and once missed was gone forever, irretrievable. There is just never enough time.

Sometimes it's as if I have this break in perception where I am standing on the outside, looking in as it unfolds. Amazement and disbelief on my face. And I think of Emily and how much experience we have shared. Nature vs. Nurture. Sometimes I think that we are the same person. So much emotion in common.

And then it was early morning cold and my hand making the scraping noises on glass, digging myself out for the trek home. I pointed my car into a snowstorm and began the journey westward. At times the blizzard was so furious that I could not even see the road and I thought, how perfect. It is good to live near the precipice, to not be able to fool yourself out of the belief in its existence.

Scotch rambling.

The orbs of wine are winding blue and I let go of my perspective like jumping into the deep end of the pool with no goggles, no sight just sensation all over the body, the crushing weight of gravity more intense with each inch sinking lower and lower to the bottom. He held my hand as we watched the sun plummet into the grey western sky, more lonely even than waking with you already gone.

Too analytical as you find yourself wondering what in the hell you are doing to yourself as it all unfolds in front of you. The present moment always an event in the past that you can remove yourself from, you can never quite let go enough to be more than just the omniscient narrator of heart break and inevitability.

His stubble makes my face red and he laughs at me for being so fair-skinned. You are the Harts and the O'Sullivans and all of the lilting romanticism that entails. All we can hope for is to be honest with our selves even at the intersections of a cruel fate and all that could have been. There is no room for regret. That is the one truth that you will not let go of, despite everything else. There is no room for regret.

The long expanse of asphalt and highway leads you home again, to the house that glows warm and orange from the outside looking in. Pumpkins and cornstalks and warmth and acceptation inside. Always. And if there was a way I could tell you how much just your simple presence means to me, I would. But I have no words. We two sit on the cold leather and just take the other for granted. But in this omniscient moment know that I would be nothing were it not for you. When the world spins around me all chaos it is you that brings me back to my center, grounds me.

I am grateful for every moment that I live by your side.

The sound of autumn.

A long stretch of asphalt and too much time to complete the journey home, each western mile like a sigh passing between lovers, a silent communication more potent than language. The world this morning was blanketed in fog and cloud, making the highway the set of a play, where you see just enough of the scene to get the general idea of the world that waits beyond the curtains. The sun broke through the haze as I neared the expansive concrete that bridges highway to highway over the metro parks, America's only real art, as the surrealist's would say. It was early still and the angle cast every shadow forward, westward, and I chased the shade of my car until home. There is something undeniably lonely about a sunny day when all you want is rain, clouds, and for the weather to collapse the world to its lowest common denominator.

Worlds began and ended while we lay still, hanging on tightly, trying desperately to not let the future be a distraction from the present. His scent lingered on the sheets both mornings and I remained longer than I had intended, not wanting to miss a moment of it while I had it. We few, we happy few. I remind the child inside that she must hang on tightly to let go lightly.

The other day JD told me that he offers up prayers for me, in hopes that I will find the right one. He looks at me with eyes so much like my own and a part of me moved as if waking from a deep sleep. So much of this life is complicated beyond my ability to understand. What else can we do but offer up our faith and be assured that God's plan makes sense in a way that is beyond our ephemeral knowing.

I was sent a prayer that is so beautiful it makes my heart convulse.
I offer you all of me, all that I am and all that I am not. I offer you every good decision and every regrettable mistake, every great accomplishment and every missed opportunity, every divinely inspired gift and every unapplied talent, every success and every miserable failure. I offer you all joy and all heartache, every kindness and every bitterness to be forgotten, every twinkle in my eye and every tear flowing down my cheek, every great love and each lost or irrecoverable act of charity. I offer you every quiet reflective moment and all of the unneeded chaos around me, all things holy and good in me and all things in need of greater purification. I give you every joyful memory and every bitter foul pain, each future moment and every missed opportunity to love, every kind act and each regrettable harsh word, all meekness and humility within me and every misplaced prideful thought, every virtue and every weak vice, every laugh and all misery mixed with weeping. I give you every healthy breath and every weakness of mind and body, every attempt at chastity and every unworthy lustful thought, every restful repose and every anxious sleepless night. You can have all of me, the beauty that you've deposited deep within me and the emptiness of my faults. I love you and am yours completely. Amen.

The pride.

It's the way the smell of antiseptic violates the tender insides of your nose when you first break the threshold of a hospital. The beeping, the burning of fluorescent lights, the anonymous moans and sighs from rooms down the endless expanse of worn linoleum. It squeaks under shoes.

We found the room and my first thought was how small he looked in the bed, white blanket and gown which were not capable of keeping one warm enough. There were no chairs so we stood, awkwardly. We each tried to maintain a fumbling conversation, most of which went unheard and I could not help but keep thinking of the scene in Tombstone when Doc tells Wyatt not to come back anymore. If you ever had any feelings for me, leave now and don't come back. And I thought that 99 years was an inconceivable amount of time. Every now and then his whole body stiffened and his face grimaced under the weight of some unbearable pain. I eyed my father in my periphery and imagined what it would be like, what the emotions would be. My mind refused the image and so I went to the window, and looked out. The brick work Gotham-esque in its decadence. Now given way to decay, expansion, and a shoddy time-gone-by appearance.

As we left he looked at me and said, hey don't take any shit from those assholes on the street and laughed his dry nasal laugh that I remembered from when we were little children. The mind holding fast while the body lets out a long sigh, and subsides.

We went to the Irish Pub and had black-and-tans and remembered. The first beer came and he raised his glass and told me better enjoy it while we have it! And I offered up every ounce of gratefulness that I could muster. My heart like a freed balloon, floating up to the heavens, carried off by a wild and untamed wind. I countered with here's to a long life and we drank, for awhile, in silence.

There is a difference between regret and the surrender to inevitability. We laughed as we planned out what our futures would look like because they involved all of us as old crotchety types, armed to the teeth and wholly self-sufficient. Then he steered the bow of the truck into the waning sun and we made our trip back home. And in the silence of the ride back I took out my knife and carved a piece of the day to be encased in amber, and held onto forever.

And that's the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Those who hold the light

It comes in waves like the last hint of summer hidden on the trailing edge of each gust as we sat, cars off, in a parking lot illuminated by the moon, and by its light reflected off of the clouds. The whole world blue and distant and out of focus. I am having difficulty remembering what it is to accept kindness, with nothing else attached but the perfection of each slow moment. The drive home I catch myself thinking that I don't deserve these little pieces of tenderness. I wrack my brain to remember the deed I did to earn such a gift. Nothing comes.

At the hours we meet my mind works in pictures and I try to conjure up phrases to make the translation, but they come awkwardly and sometimes not at all. I have a lot of luggage, he tells me. And I picture him, Atlas, world upon strong but burdened shoulders. We are both so tired. I picture me as Athena as I catapult the world into the distant reaches of the galaxy, so that he could stand upright at last, even if only for a moment before gravity brings the weight back down on him.

Sometimes I know that I am a fool, a child playing at being an adult. It doesn't bother me, most of the time. Except when we make eye contact and I can see that there is a palpable sadness that is rooted in the soul, rooted to the very core. I have no words, my immaturity belies the depths to which that desperation moves me. He tells me that my blue eyes are piercing and I try to turn it off but I never can. So I look away. He tells me stories about all of his thoughts and I know that he has spent a lot of time thinking in those ways.

And then it is the rising sun and taillights in rear view mirrors. And before long, not even that.

To the ends of the earth, and beyond.

The sun slanted lazily in the crisp blue sky, subsiding into its autumnal slope lower and lower as the earth angles towards winter. It was freezing outside the night before, already the frost playing with my breath, leaving its mark on blades of grass and car windows. All things covered brightly with frozen dew, rounding corners and making the night appear soft, unfocused. The heat escaped from his car in waves and I leaned in to keep my hands warm, to keep from giving in to the cold.

We stood like that for over an hour, frozen in time, most of the conversation taking place between the spoken words in pauses and sighs. Held glances. And I laughed at myself for completing his sentence and he told me that he couldn't think right when I was around. And I laughed.

The winter will be long, spring even more so. I thought of JD and how I need to practice just offering it up more unconditionally. Driving home I realized that we will never have that moment back, not in the same way. A momentary sadness filled the empty spaces inside the car. My brain conjured up an image of Ranger, and of Arizona. My heart opened up and filled itself with the convulsive beauty of impermanence, I connected with that forgotten happiness. A perfect night because it was ephemeral, fleeting. Hang on tightly while you have it, and let go lightly when its gone.

I am so incredibly lucky.

Nothing better

It is funny how sometimes when you are thrown a curve ball, which you had no way of anticipating and no idea on how to handle, the body and mind turn mutinous and all that's left is reaction. A moving of the lizard brain deep within. You reach out, swing wildly, and to the utter amazement of nature and all the fates who are watching, make contact. Sometimes that's all a person can hope for, making contact.

It rains lately from 5am until the taillights reflect red off the wet pavement some hours later. The lazy breeze ushers the smell of copper and of cologne through open windows, exposed tenderness. You say the words I never knew were contained within such an unlikely frame. We talk about religion and fate and hope and the youthful optimism of endless possibility. The air is thick with the excitement of what could be, the sometimes perfection of waiting. We carry on even beyond the clock's insistence that it is time to go home, with full hearts to empty houses.

Wet pavement.

With the passing of our birthday came autumn heralding in with it the magic and beauty and mystery of yet another changing season, the world growing older. As my feet made contact with pavement I awoke slowly and slipped into an easy cadence of just moving forward. It rained, but only slightly, and was really more of a mist that slowly fell earthward, covering everything in a hazy wetness. The best weather for a run, in my completely biased opinion. The trail was covered with the early leaves of fall, orange and red and yellow, but mostly brown and fallen for the dryness of the summer. They crunched and crackled and broke into pieces under my feet.

The dampness of the air held thick and heavy the fragrance of the turning season. The last of the cut hay, burdened apple trees letting loose their fruit to the ground, the smell of cider and of woodsmoke. The trail led me past bonfires, farmers turning their fields, families not put-off by the rain, gathered under tarps and canopies, hanging on to the last of the sunlight before the cold forces the living world inside for the dark months of winter.

I rounded the halfway point and started the trek back. The trail went through a clearing far removed from the roads and the houses, and for a moment the whole of the earth was silent. A distant and lonely formation of wild geese flew overhead and one let out a solitary cry into the vast and gloomy sky. A reminder from an ancient world that beauty is not meted out in handfuls, it just is. The wind rustled through the grass and the wildflowers and the rain soaked my clothing. Mind gave way to body and I subsided into each breath, each footfall, each swing of each arm, and the way the rain stuck to my face and lingered on my eyelashes.

There is no meditation like running, and no perfection like going beyond what your mind will allow.

Steel yourself up, warriors!

I remember when I first read the words of the poem it was like the easing of tension when things fit into their right places. Dust shaken off. I love autumn for the high, clear blue skies, the cold just at the edge of the wind foreshadowing the bitterness to come, the pungency of the leaves decaying, all things subsiding into themselves to prepare for the harshness of the winter ahead. And so it is with us. We cleave ourselves of the baggage we accumulated during the fickle spring and unrelenting summer. Winter is not as kind and must be met sparsely and with unencumbered hearts. We begin the transit back into our selves, to find that old refuge and reconnect with the lonely and formidable strengths which, in its hopeful foolishness, spring put up on a shelf, and left forgotten.

That is all I have. All of our strength and courage are with you, our hands stretched out to wrench the luggage from your shoulders if you'd only give some sign.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Word from the mark.

The streets last night were bright as dawn though it was still hours away from the rising of the sun. A full and lonely moon hung in the east like a Christmas ornament revealing the world in layers of blue that only the deepest and most remote part of the eye could acknowledge, and make sense of. A belabored run took me past houses that I realized I had never noticed before, the moon's luminescence revealing the remotest places that before I passed by, blind. A couple argued loudly on the stoop of a recessed tenement, a cat darted from behind a tree and across the road. Cars passed, students wound their way home.

Halfway to the halfway point and the clouds obscured the moon, a perfect halo of blue circling that hidden orb like when we were kids and used to sneak cigarettes on the deck off of my room in the late night. Sticks and leaves and other detritus from the storm littered the path I took and the asphalt responded to each footfall with a wary and suspicious sigh. As if it knew better.

Past the house, finally, where my grandmother used to live. The sign next to the door still welcoming guests that hadn't been around to call for over a decade. The memory of my ancestors eviscerated by the wild pack of wolves that is this life, their bones turned to ash and left to the wind. To scatter and not to rest. Their story my burden, as if by keeping the heritage alive in my heart I could call upon their strength and fortitude when my own wanes. A nod to my childish belief in such a system of interconnectedness via moral code as I sprinted to the finish, to our door.

I turned the corner and waited but you didn't come. Foolish maybe for me to think that you would. The wolf subsided into the loneliness of it all and once the letting-go was done felt again at ease. I will take the plain south, through the barren snow field towards the crest of mountains with no name, just always out of reach. When I was a child I used to look at the thick stands of trees in the distance, at the far reaches of the plowed fields we'd pass in the car headed to wherever we were going. I would fantasize about opening the door the next time my father stopped and running without stopping until I reached the trees, and then running still. As if there would be life waiting for me somewhere out there devoid of the modern complications, natural, something that I could make sense of. And so it is.

We fit between the raindrops.

The moment came at last and I watched it pass and go by as if the me it involved was just a character in some other person's omniscient version of reality. As if I could be at the same actor and director, as if life can be manipulated in such a way. He leaned out of his window and the cars passing down the road slowed in deference to the fleetingness of our exchange. Small talk. Inside jokes. Laughter and blue eyes, small for his face, I remember thinking, but endearing.

He released me with the standard, be careful, be safe, be smart, and I waved it off as I usually do, saying that I always am. He looked at me and, me being too much of the wolf to give in first, I could not look away. I would hate it, I mean, I would be really upset if anything were to happen to you or if you were to get hurt because I really like you. You know, I'm fond of you. A lot. With stutter-steps and awkward pauses filled with laughter it came out like a sighted person fumbling through the dark towards the exit. I watched the taillights until the red no longer reflected off the grey and dismal street.

Inside I was vapor carried off by the rain and what was left was just reaction, and the ability to do my job. What has happened? I fell into something and I should reach for my flashlight and have a good look around. Instead I light candles and reflect upon how sometimes it is better to just wait and see what comes.

You help me find it.

I wore the shirt until the last lingering scent was gone and what remained was the salty crust of sweat and heat and the memory of it. The room a shambles as I stretched beneath a single ray streaming in through an open window, the waning sun's earliest sentinel of autumn to come. Outside children laughed in the street as they made their way home from school and the wind rustled dry leaves off the branches of the two big maple trees. The simple perfection of things falling into place for even just a moment.

Later the calculated exchanges were endearing for their transparency. The roles that we can play for each other, the slots that we can fill. And I wondered, can there be weakness between our kind? Can the hunter make himself vulnerable enough to put up his bow for even just one embrace? The answers come slowly and in measured doses. We both fumble in the dark.

At the meeting an old familiar face told me in all seriousness that the most important thing he learned came from my father when he said, life is tough unless you weaken and I knew instantly that it wasn't true. Later I asked my father and he laughed and said that he had no idea where the quote came from but he was not the source.

And I remembered something I heard once which is far more accurate, that the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. The words came to me easily and something that had been asleep for a long time stirred inside me as if to wake at last.

After awhile we walked through the darkened parking lot to the very back where I had left the car and as we went we passed who I can only refer to as orange pants now and seeing him I instantly felt a sacred kinship to my father. I pushed him playfully and then pulled him close to me. We are not the ones they speak of who will be broken. At home the exchanges between we two hunters continued and the fire within me again stirred, each word a billows stoking the glowing coals. There is a balance between strength and weakness, a line which separates the tenderness and the harshness of the world. There is a way to carry sorrow beautifully and to be constantly awestruck by the goodness of what can be contained in one single moment of this life.

We carry the flame

The thoughts that creep in during quiet moments between heartbeats, the fleeting stillness of an idiotic hope. A long ago whisper echoing through the dark, she told me once life is over there, behind the shelf the sexton keeps the key to,putting up our life, his porcelain, like a cup, the skeleton of a thought that was once flesh.

I closed its cover and a solitary droplet of saltwater traced the outline of my cheekbone, following gravity down to the hollow inside of my ear. All at once the beauty of human life descended heavily down, down, down and crushed me in a sudden remembering. I wondered how long it had been since I felt that feeling. How long since I even remembered that it was possible to cry for what was beautiful, and not just for the ugly and broken.

We stood there at the end of the world, early morning fog obscuring the horizon as we looked back at the space that spanned the void. A bridge from nowhere, to nowhere. There were no words, somehow silence was the only appropriate reaction. I thought of the moment when I realized that the poem was about God, I was still standing on a northern corner, moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves. Proof of your existence? There is nothing but. In an instant the words' loneliness was replaced by a contentedness that has only been rivaled by the hunger after a good swim. I imagined what Alaska would look like during those months when it is never dark but never quite light either. The sun teasing the earth below by casting an unending dusk upon the land. Would the sky dance with reds and oranges and purples as the children made their way home, as dinner was prepared and the fire stoked?

And why is it that such details make all of the difference?

I'll bite at your ankles

Josh or one of the other con guys that we used to be infatuated with scrawled it across a wheat paste poster illuminationanticipationisbetterthansex... and he had a point. The anticipation is usually better, in all things. Except, except.

Eight of us on tonight and I think I was sent to 80% of the calls. Monitoring my MDT screen throughout the shift, keeping track of all the red lines. The delineation between sheepdog and sheep. I remember him saying you'd tell me if you thought I wasn't pulling my weight, the image of that self-consciousness was in my mind as I was saying motherfucker through tight-lips at my radio all night. A girl could get burnt out like this. I think that you are not pulling your weight.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. My evidence guy came to back me up and he had no equipment to process fingerprints. Had to go all the way back to the department to retrieve the right tools. Me in a dark sandstone dirt floor basement with my gun drawn, flashlight leading the way. Clearing every cob-webbed corner for the bad guy who had committed the aggravated burglary, lest he be hiding out, waiting for me to leave. All by myself and I knew it was stupid. But those damn red lines on my computer screen makes the sheepdog in me puff up. Later the homeowner commended me for my bravery. No time to eat and he sends me a quick message to not be mad because he's going to lunch. I go from call to call to call like a freaking car-hop and I am still motherfucking the radio.

It's nights like these that my appreciation for JD grows exponentially. And I begin to understand the sarcasm in his voice.

Later on a 911 hang-up and my backup diverts to a different, more glamorous call. I can hear the frustration in the dispatchers voice as she is looking for someone who will back me up. In the end no one comes and I offer everything up to God. Because really, what else can you do?

Tomorrow I will be stronger, and smarter.

Next time.

Remember:
The good guys always win. There is no way we can do anything other than what God has planned for us. It just takes faith and then comes so much sweetness.

You will always be stronger than the last moment if you choose to be. You will always be smarter tomorrow. Think about it.

There is still a warrior standing with her arms outstretched to the fates in a still darkened parking lot as the morning rush hour traffic whizzes by a few hundred yards off. That strength, determination, resolve and self-assuredness ripples underneath.

You are farther along than you will allow yourself; take the break that you know you need.

LOVE/hate.

You tell yourself you are smarter than this in the quiet moments after you wake up in the morning or as you make the slow trek to bed through darkened hallways in the empty house. You make a strong resolve to pack up the accumulated baggage, small as it may be, and toss it over the nearest bridge next time you run. Watch gravity take it all the way down until the river has claimed it, and there are no more ripples. You remind yourself of how it will end, otherwise, and try to be practical for the foolish girl who would suffer through the inevitable pain. You keep a steady eye on that weakness that just can't find it in herself to care.

Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all she whispers in my ear on my most recent run.

The phone beeps and like Pavlov's dog I am transfixed. The determination evaporates like the early fog of what will be a very hot day. You can't stop thinking about me. I find myself in mid-conversation before I realize that I've dialed the number. The whole relationship is played out between the lines and hours afterward I am still engrossed in the analyzation of what wasn't said. Then later, when it rings again, the waltz we dance with the sound of laughter and sighing. There is so much potentiality in what can never be and you think that you must enjoy torturing yourself.

You think too much, I have told him. Using the conversation as a mirror to remind myself of my own truths, and to see if any of it takes hold across the cell towers. What will the reaction be? His answers, between the lines of what we say I realize that it is not like falling at all. It is much more like a slow descent down a dark trail where you can't even see your hand in front of your face. The fingers become the eyes and all you can do is pray that your instincts can be trusted.

And we tell each other, everything happens for a reason.

Paper jam

The way the story was retold was actually worse even than I thought the two-dimensional paper version would be. I remember the way he looked at me when we were out in the hallway before the pow-wow. I knew he was thinking of packing it in and finishing the report with TOT... and I did not want to accept that. Don't allow yourself plan B, it's just that simple. It was the same look in the squad room, because I was staring at him during the re-telling. A pause in the monologue would be followed up by eye contact that I never let myself break. The middle-schooler inside would have been proud. My SCAN instructor told us that 95% of lies told are lies of omission...

The constant analyzing that I inherited from my parents, the skills of observation, is both a blessing and a curse. I am pretty sure I am at the top of the curve when it comes to reading people, but it is sometimes painful to know the thought behind the thought.

As I was driving while on routine patrol much later I found myself, again, praying. For a stronger next moment. To be free of the negative thoughts which were draining my energy. To physically feel the guiding hand, the divine light within. The autumn-like winds rocked the cruiser and blew my hair across my face. The sun shone through huge, puffy clouds and it smelled like Olympia, like rain. There is always this moment, I thought, and it is always my own, and I can be as strong in it as I choose.

I gave myself advice via his arrest as I processed her this morning. I told her that we always have the ability to move forward, and to make the next step one that counts, one that is in the right direction. Here is to one foot forward.

Shades of blue.

Three traffic stops on Friday, each with their own absurdness. I accredited it to the fact that it was the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year. I hope that doesn't mean that I'm into all the moon crap as one of my counterparts questioned.

1.
I was driving northbound on a busier street in town, minding my own business, drinking coffee and being thankful for such a sweet job. Ahead of me a car pulled onto the road from a residential street, completely blowing through the stop sign. I immediately activated my lights, and she stopped. When I walked up she told me that it was a new car and she was still getting used to how it worked. I asked her if the gas pedal and the brake were in relatively the same place as her previous car. Then I wrote her a ticket.

2.
I was sitting at a dead-end in a residential neighborhood, where you can simultaneously watch about three intersections. There was a paltry amount of traffic, and everyone was obeying the law and stopping for all of the stop signs. I was getting bored so I put in gear and started to creep out to resume patrol. A car approached the intersection that I was not ten feet from and completely blew through the stop sign, not even a whisper on the brake pedal. I activated my lights and she stopped. I walked up and she was very apologetic and really didn't have an excuse for why she didn't even pretend to stop. I wrote her a ticket because the house next door has five kids that play in the street a lot. Tragedy waiting to happen. When I walked back up to have her sign it she started crying and told me that what she actually was doing was praying and was so deep in concentration that she didn't even see the stop sign. I should have told her that she didn't pray hard enough. Instead I just handed her the yellow copy as she cursed the Divine.

3.
Waiting for a red light at one of the "no right on red" intersections in town and the car ahead of me turns right. I cut through the gas station parking lot and turn the lights on. She doesn't pull over. I honk the air horn a couple of times and she signals to turn left. I am right behind her gesticulating, with the lights blasting away and she turns into the Starbucks parking lot. She slowly finds a parking space, pulls in, turns the car off and starts to get out as I'm parking and jumping out of my car to beat her to the asphalt. I tell her to get back in her car and point to my lights blazing and ask her if she realized I was pulling her over. She looks stupefied -- she had no idea. Duh, she hadn't had any coffee yet. Yeah, she got a ticket. And I noticed, after I pulled away from the stop, she put it in gear without getting that first cup of java.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What was it about today? There was something about the way she started to answer our questions before we had even finished asking them that struck me as wrong. The explanations just came out too readily. The dry-mouth was a massive red flag and I could see the face of my SCAN instructor -- he had an eyebrow raised and I didn't let it pass by unnoticed. Out in the hallway I thought for sure that my counterpart would agree with me, that we would huddle up and figure out our attack. His dissent made me question my conviction, and I volunteered to do the leg work to prove to myself that I wasn't crazy. He stayed and continued with the questioning. Before we parted I looked at him and said she's guilty as sin. He looked back with those hazel eyes. What if I'm wrong?

When I returned, victorious, she was mid-sentence with an entirely new line of bullshit. I was tired of the game, of the lying I am always so tired of the lying, so I pressed her hard, impatiently, and asked for corroboration. She was too reluctant and you could tell she was getting tired of keeping track of her story. So my counterpart posed her with the old, well if you're innocent then you won't mind if we look, right? To which she, of course, agreed. Because if you say no you look guilty.

Which kills me, by the way. Because if you say yes, we are going to find it, and then you are guilty. What tangled webs we weave.

We started in the bedroom, because it's always in the bedroom, and I found her drug stash. My counterpart uncovered a drawer full of sex toys and was totally engrossed when I noticed her apparently rearranging shoes in her closet. In a flash I realized that rearranging shoes in your closet while the po-po is performing a consent search in your bedroom is just not normal behavior. So I suggested to her, look, why don't you step out here and stand in the middle of the room where we can see what you're doing. I made a bee-line for the purse she had been trying to bury under a pile of shoes and, as if by magic, recovered what we had been looking for. Her eyes were burning holes into my soul the entire time I slowly unzipped every compartment of the purse. I kept watch on her out of my periphery and new I was going to find it. So much so that it was almost like watching a movie that you've seen before, the inevitable unfolding.

The rest was mostly procedure and paperwork.

I cornered him later though with I called it. Part of me felt cheap for saying it but I couldn't keep it down. He knew, and the look in those hazel eyes spoke volumes. Maybe it will be different now, I don't know. Things are changing all of the time with us.

As always it's his paper, his credit. I can't wait to read the two-dimensional version of how the whole thing went down. If nothing else I learned, unequivocally, to not question the gut reaction. You are right, the mystery is in figuring out how you are right.

Later, on my own, on the bike path, flying on the asphalt with the sun burning my nose. Glorious sanctuary that it is, the bike path. I found myself praying. Thank you, God, for such a beautiful day, the wind on my face, the sun, the strength to hurl myself forward, mile after mile. Thank you, Lord, for giving me a calling and the tools to be successful. Keep me humble, Lord, and always smarter and stronger than yesterday.

Later I got a text of admission that my gut was right on, and something about a hope that I didn't think it was down-played. And the flirtations. It is like being given a present of a book that's in a language I can't read. What does any of it mean? I think I should stick to my solitude, and to Rumi. Because when he says we have a barrel full of wine, but no cups. Which is fine with us, I understand.

Viva la vida.

The first thing I noticed when I cleared the apartment were the cat droppings covering the living room floor, and then the cat, emaciated, with its eyes gone. It looked like one of those cartoons of a dead fish, where it's just the rib cage and two "exes" where its eyes had been. I remember thinking, well, maybe he just went out of town and forgot the poor bastard, completely denying the smell that was raping my nostrils. I pulled my gun and saw Don follow suit. I remember remarking to myself that I was going to have to be the sheepdog in this, if there was a bad-guy lurking somewhere. I could hear the building manager in the hallway, repeating everything that I said. I remember wondering if she always repeated things back like that, or if perhaps it was just the way her nervousness manifested. I cleared left and turned to cover Don but when I saw his expression, I knew. He had found him.

The image of his face, purplish black and bloated, is burned into my memory and I find it in the forefront of my mind when I allow the brain to idle. The smell, the flies, the utter loneliness of the view from his shabby eleventh floor apartment. The calendar on the wall was from a local Chinese restaurant and was stuck in April, 2007. There were fifteen unplayed messages on the answering machine that had accrued during the week he was MIA; all of them from the same man who was not his family.

It was better when my grandfather's friend from the coroner's office arrived. He reminded me of Grandpa Z and it wasn't so bad to go back into that death house with him. The compassion behind his eyes, his gentle way of moving, was unmistakable. We talked for the hour that we waited for the body to be removed. Mostly about the connection between our families, police work and the like, but every now and then the topic strayed to the apartment's former resident and how a life could possibly end up in such a way. I offered up my thanks that he was the one sent that particular afternoon.

And when I got home I ran and I cannot stop. I have logged hundreds of miles with my legs over the days since I was sent on that call, and sweat gallons. My entire body is sore, but it works itself out as soon as I get going again. I have discovered that if part of me is feeling pain, if it is hard and I have to push myself to keep going, then there's no mistaking that I'm alive. That there is no chance I will end up cloistered in a 90-degree dismal apartment with old photos on the wall of people who don't call anymore. That at least, if I am to die soon, when my grandfather's friend comes to investigate he will think to himself, her house was in order and she kept herself in shape.

And why that is important to me I really haven't figured out, but it is directly related to that hot Friday afternoon.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And there is another memory that keeps descending from the recesses of my mind, when I am alone and it's quiet and I have the time to indulge myself. It ties us together in an invisible spiderweb. When we talked, the way he mentioned it, I knew that it held the same place in his mind, and I imagined him shutting up the door to the guest room, closing his eyes, and being selfish for just a few moments. The way that sounds change on humid nights, the way that smells linger and float heavily in the damp air. The way that our gravities orbit each other, like a waltz in slow-motion. I can't forget it.