Via Negativa

"Is everything good also bad?"
                                   ~ Laura Read

I'm not good either at driving. I came
to driving late. Unlike the way kids here
take driver's ed in high school, I was almost
30 when I got behind the wheel. My father
had a Mitsubishi Galant, which he bought 
but himself could not drive. He hired a man 
named Bruno with one lazy eye and a head 
of white hair to drive for him 6 days a week 
and as needed. I guess I'm good enough
at driving local, but terrified of getting on 
the expressway. That's why on the whole,
I think I'm a bad driver. I'm also bad at reading
maps. I look for landmarks to memorize:
gnarled trees, old buildings, the high school
across from the middle school; the church-
yard where every Wednesday in summer
there's a farmer's market. But I'm pretty good 
at reading the room for weird energy signals
coming from whoever's there, who I'd rather
not shake hands with. I'm good at finishing 
most tasks I've been given, and bad at saying 
no. I'm good at poaching eggs with no need
for fancy equipment. An old, dented pan, 
boiling water; I turn off the heat, slide each 
egg in, and cover the lot with a lid. I leave it 
undisturbed while I toast bagels and set 
the table. Then I lift them gently out of
the water. Do you also find it hard not to wear 
your heart on your sleeve? I'm bad  at hiding 
my own true feelings. But for the most part, 
when asked to pass the butter and the butter
knife, I remember I'm not supposed to point
the tip outward toward its recipient. What
am I supposed to hold then—the blade?

When my father was buried, cremation
was not yet the common practice it is today.

So he is buried in the northwestern section
of the Baguio Cemetery. But wait, all of a sudden

I'm not so sure. I think he's buried in a crypt, meaning 
his coffin with he himself in it, or what used to be 

the shell of himself dressed in his best dark suit 
and tie down to his best polished shoes, was slid into

a cement rectangle, then sealed, then given a coat
of white paint and a marble marker. I can't remember

who decided on any of these things, since I was young
and petrified by this colossal, new grief. There was a brief

argument about what direction he should face, as if it would 
change anything if his head pillowed on satin pointed toward 

the mountains and the space between, where the sun 
went down each evening. You might think this is just another 

poem, again, about grieving my father's death. It's been 
nearly five decades but I can still see his hands, laid one atop

the other; and between them, a rosary broken to signify how, 
despite our sadness, the rest of us weren't ready to follow.

Where is she now, the one you say left you
              in the swamp of your late awakening? 
And where is the one you pined for in dream 
             after waking dream? She and I are one 
and the same. You think only one of us halved
            her heart when she left you. You think
leaving means only that you could not see 
            the marks our bodies left in space: finger 
trails in a spill of flour and sugar, but not  
            enough wisps of hair to embroider
your name on a pillowcase edge. She comes
            to me when both of us are nearly 
flattened by the unpredictability of time, and
            one of us tells the other she can rest.

At our monthly gathering, a friend 
close to retirement said she had finally 
moved into her own apartment, years after
living with a partner in his house. Someone
wanted to know if she wasn't lonely, if she 
didn't now miss the way he cooked for her,
or how every now and then he'd filled 
the garden with music bands and guests
milling around under garlands of light,
wine glasses in hand. But I think I can 
understand that kind of need—which doesn't 
mean the desire for erasure, not yet. The anxious
wind settles around rooftops, and the call
of birds carries high into the trees. In public
gardens, irises start to unfurl their frilly skirts, 
and hydrangeas rise from the tight whorls
of leaves. Born and raised in a house 
where people came and went and doors
were never closed, an armchair in a corner
or the top of a double bed became a whole
planet; became a vessel for sailing away.