The Rope
what's in my hand
There’s a rope in my hand. Do you see it? Some people say they can’t see it, but they can’t see a lot of things. Do you see it? Here, I’ll hold it up in the light.
It’s a pretty thick rope, huh? Thick as an apple and thicker than a banana. I don’t know where it goes. It goes that way. It’s always gone that way. I can’t ever see what’s at the other end, but I know something is.
Sometimes I feel something through the rope like a heartbeat, like a “thump, thump, thump,” you know? Like a big heart, “thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.” It’ll be like that, like the other end of the rope goes around the heart of some giant turtle, off somewhere I can’t see.
Turtles can sleep for ages and ages under the water. Then they’ll poke their nose up, into the snow or ice or rain or sunshine or whatever is happening, and then they’ll go back under water, again. That’s so cool! Wouldn’t it be just so, so cool to live that way?
Sometimes, a lot of times actually, something on the other end will pull the rope, and I have to plant my feet and hunker down so it doesn’t pull me away with it.
Sometimes, I feel whatever is on the other end of the rope, falling, or getting dragged away, and I have to pull, pull, pull, until they’re back where they go. Everybody should be where they go. I don’t understand why they get dragged off their spot.
You see the rope, don’t you? Sometimes my brother would see things that weren’t there. Everybody got so worried. They kept poking me and testing me to see if I also saw things that aren’t there, but I don’t. I always thought it might be kinda cool.
I don’t see them, though. Not actually. Sometimes I see things that not everybody else can see, but as long as I can get a few people who say they see it, then I know it’s really there, just not so always so easy to see.
Sometimes my brother would get upset because of the things he saw that didn’t exist. He’d get upset and angry and confused, and men would come and take him to the doctor. He’d stay away a while, then everybody would say “you look so much better!” which he didn’t, but he looked quieter–maybe sadder, at least for a while. They liked it when he was quiet.
When he’d get to feeling better, he’d tell me what it was like while he was away. “Some days, the people are really nice, but the food is really terrible. Then, other days, the food is really good, but the people are just awful.”
“That’s funny. It was just like that here.” I’d say.
Sometimes, little birds will land on the rope. They’ll have little bird conversations and look at me like “why are you holding onto OUR rope, mister?” I can feel their little heart beat, through their tiny feet, through my thick rope, into my ugly fingers, into my heart, into my mind, into my soul. I don’t know if they realize I can do that.
Sometimes, when they land on the rope, they have food in their little beaks. Sometimes it’s berries and seeds. I’d eat that. Sometimes it’s worms and bugs. Bugs, I can kind of see bugs, I mean, shrimp are bugs, aren’t they? Worms, though, I don’t think I could eat a worm. They’re just slimy and gross, and they have dirt on them. Some people like worms; they can have all mine.
Somebody said that worms look like ropes. Yeah, nah. Worms are not ropes. Thanks for playing, though.
I’ve always had this rope. I don’t know where it came from. I had it when I was a baby and held onto it with my baby fingers and made it part of my babyness.
When I wanted to learn to walk, I pulled the rope to pull me up, then held on to it so I wouldn’t fall. Feeling things on the other end of the rope let me know I wasn’t alone. Babies cry, not because they hurt, but because they feel alone, and they don’t know how to talk yet. Old people cry because the world isn’t what it’s supposed to be, and some days I feel the most awful, hurtful things happening on the other end of the rope, even though I don’t know what they are.
A lady once told me that, when I was born, when I was just born–the very moment, the rope went from my stomach up inside my mother. Before I was born, my mother would eat roast pecans, pickles, ham sandwiches, pizzas, hamburgers, spaghetti, apples, and figs, and it would go from her stomach through the tube, into my stomach. Maybe that’s why I like to eat those things.
The lady said that the very first thing they did was slap me to make me cry, then they cut the rope going from me up into my mother. I can’t understand why they’d do that. I like my mother. I like the way she makes ham sandwiches and spaghetti. Why would they do that?
The rope that went between my mother and me fell to the ground. One end stretched off into the far-off distance, so far off I couldn’t see the other end, but this end, the one that went into my belly, it went up into my baby hands, and it’s been there ever since.
Sometimes, a lot of times actually, I hold the rope really lightly to see if I can feel my mother on the other end. It’s been ever so long since I’ve seen her, or heard her voice, or had her spaghetti. I stretch out with my feelings and my rope, but she’s not there. She hasn’t been there in a long time.
Sometimes, I hold the rope up to my face to see if I can smell her. Does that sound dumb? I hate when I sound dumb.
Sometimes, people say “Boyd, you’re so dumb,” but they’re wrong. I’m not dumb. I’m smart, just not smart like they’re smart. I can figure out anything they can figure out–maybe just not as quickly. Sometimes, I can figure out things they can’t even imagine.
Sometimes I think, maybe, well, sometimes maybe, I think holding on to the rope makes it harder to understand things because I spend so much time relying on what I can feel through the rope. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. Maybe I am dumb.
Sometimes, I feel like, on the other end of the rope, I mean, I can feel a friend–somebody who likes me, somebody who likes sharing a rope with me. They send me little messages and cartoons over the internet.
Sometimes, I feel like, on the other end of the rope, I feel somebody who hates me, hates the rope, and hates all the other people with their hands on the rope. I feel bad for them, even though they make me mad. Sometimes, really mad.
I don’t like getting mad. “Big boys don’t get mad, Boyd. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Sometimes, sometimes, I’m not a good boy at all. I’m a very, very bad boy, and I get so mad, so mad I just want to wrap the rope around somebody and pull it so tight their eyeballs pop out–and then I think, “why?”
I don’t think they meant to make me mad. It’s not easy living on the rope. Not easy for them, not easy for me. Then I don’t feel mad anymore. I feel ashamed.
There’s a little bird what lands on my rope sometimes. Sometimes she rests there at night. “You shouldn’t ever be ashamed, little bird. Everybody makes mistakes. I keep mine in this box behind me. I’m not sure why I keep them, but I put them in the box, then sometimes I sit on the box because I get tired–so tired, so very, very tired. Do you get tired little bird? I mean, you can fly, can’t you? I can’t fly. That’d be so cool. Don’t eat that worm, that’s gross.”
Some days, the rope goes still, but it never goes limp. There’s always something at the other end of the rope, I just don’t always know what it is.
One day, I got really tired. I sat on my box of mistakes, but I was still tired. I slid off, and I sat on the ground. Then, I lay on the cold, cold ground, waiting for it to swallow me up. I tried to let go of the rope, but it wouldn’t let go of me. I cried and let something pull me in a direction opposite to where the rope went. I didn’t know where I was going–but I didn’t care.
I slid, and I slid, and I fell. It was so dark and so cold, but I didn’t care. I was tired. So, so, very tired. Sometimes, I could feel people trying to reach me through the rope, but I’d pretend like I couldn’t. “The person you’re trying to reach isn’t available. Please leave a message.”
One day, when it was the darkest and the coldest, I was ready to go. I wanted to let go of the rope and find out what was next, but the rope pulled me.
Huh?
The rope isn’t supposed to pull you. I mean, I knew it could, at least in theory, but I don’t like being pulled, so I ignored it.
It pulled, and it pulled some more. Suddenly, I was in a safe place. It pulled me there. I could feel all these hands on me. They got me off the ground and let me rest on a new thing. I’m not sure what it was, but I was really determined to get back to sitting on my box of mistakes. I mean, they’re mistakes, but they’re mine, right?
I asked whoever was on the end of the rope, “Why are you pulling me?”
“You got work to do, Buddy.”
“Wait. No Wait! Really… just wait, please…Is that you? Is that your voice? I’ve missed it so much. Is that you?”
“You’ve got work to do, Buddy, Bird.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve always been on the other end of the rope; you just couldn’t see me.”
“Can we talk more? I mean, like every day, all the time every day, like when we were before, when I was little?”
“You can talk to me any time you want, Little Bird, my little Buddy. You may not always hear my answer, but I always hear your questions.”
“I don’t like this rope. It hurts me.”
“You’re mother and I made that for you. It was her idea. She’s here too. She always was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I know.”
“I love you. Can I say, Daddy? I don’t…I don’t want to break any rules.”
“You make the rules, Buddy.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. Kiss your momma, and do what she says. We’ll be in touch.”
