I didn’t understand her love of James Salter’s fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She lived the antithesis of his vacuous, fragile female characters of decoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
played volleyball<\/p>\n\n\n\n
drank beer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
mourned the death of homeless man in her neighborhood<\/p>\n\n\n\n
never used an umbrella<\/p>\n\n\n\n
wore thrift store crochet clothing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
commanded silently when she wanted to ride on top<\/p>\n\n\n\n
helped friends move<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She drove three hours to help me load the U-Haul on my last night in Newport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We packed that truck like pros while drinking IPAs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then we dipped into midnight whiskey on the front deck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I told her I wanted to kidnap a mermaid statue marooned<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a block away in a weedy rock garden of a house vacant for five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just couldn’t leave the mermaid there,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
facing away from the ocean a block away,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
tasting sea spray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I pitched the caper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She made excellent modifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We unscrewed the lights to her license plates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I set out on foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She followed a hundred yards behind,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
nudging through a ghost town of a neighborhood<\/p>\n\n\n\n
that had no through traffic,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
rarely any traffic at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walked up the dark driveway,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
snatched the mermaid,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seconds later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I held the mermaid in my lap<\/p>\n\n\n\n
while she drove us home, laughing,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
slapping the steering wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thirteen years later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I write this poem for her,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
staring at the mermaid,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
named for my accomplice,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
reading James Salter again,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
thinking about what happened<\/p>\n\n\n\n
when she clawed into the world,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
if she fulfilled her extraordinary potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t understand her love of James Salter’s fiction. She lived the antithesis of his vacuous, fragile female characters of decoration. She: played volleyball drank beer mourned the death of homeless man in her neighborhood never used an umbrella wore thrift store crochet clothing commanded silently when she wanted to ride on top helped friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10046,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043\/revisions\/10046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}