the tape measure.

Most imagine their lives in linear form, years following years, birthdays celebrated in ascending numbers. They take time and unwind it. They prop it up against their experiences like a tape measure. Here, I was born. I walked one third through foot two. Next I read and on the first black truss mark I flew. But think, what if you never locked your tape measure? What if you acknowledge that you never can? Memory would walk with you, holding your hand. Déjà vu would be comprehended quick as lightning strikes. Time as philosophers have been known to suggest would coil and curve, places you have been, people you have known, dreams you have had all entangled. Is that not already true? 

The sky is so blue it breaks my soul. I have drank two cups of coffee too many, unwise when attempting to dispel nervous energy. Paper crunches in my hand, twisted, folded, and hastily smoothed out again. Hyacinth colored ink stains my hands and a poor poet steps up to the microphone to take it all away. That was where I was this afternoon. I stepped out of my car on a quick after work errand and right into a yesterday entire feet down the tape measure. Clinton Powell had talked me into performing ("Performing," he insisted, "Not just reading.") at a poetry open mic night. There I had been for years (at least three good feet), first introduced by a frighteningly talented woman who went by the name of Sista V, listening and occasionally compelled to read some scrap of an idea I'd thought grand before scurrying hastily back to what I always tried to make a corner seat. It was after my performance that night Clinton invited me to join the ranks of those who had awed me in Spitfire Poetry Group. It was then still in its infancy, but in comparison I may as well still have been in the womb. Through the course of the next years I went from an intimidated teenager to a self-possessed performer. I performed at numerous events, attended more as a member of the audience, and for a while even co-hosted a spoken word/music open mic night with a wonderful singer and songwriter named Lauren LaPointe. 

It was an hour in my life that has passed on the tape measure, but today I was back there, feeling everything all over again. I was holding a mic in the basement of a pool hall bar, swallowing so much stage fright that I all but screamed my first lines. I was bending over a table, words tripping in a rapid, inspired exchange with Clinton regarding rhythm and dust in the blood. I was hauling a speaker half as big as myself out of the trunk of a car, laughing along with my friends at the image and the irony. I was there. The taste of coffee was in my mouth and next that of craft ale. I was there with jittery fingers making meaningful looks at the clock and the sign-up sheet. Time worn wood creaked beneath stacked heeled boots and there was somebody taking over the world with a handful of words about lying down. 

The tape measure eventually snapped back into place, revealing the long yawn of inches lined up between then and me. I let it go without longing, with no feeling of regret. It was beautiful then and it is beautiful now. Time can't fade it for me because my tape measure is unlocked. As my departed friend would say (is undoubtedly still saying somewhere between five feet, eight inches and now), I took it all joy.