Hold On

by Lillian Nećakov

with lines from Tom Waits

Dear Tom,

I want to talk to you about Frank’s wild years, that little Chihuahua called Carlos and why everyone’s always yammering on about the moon.

I stood and watched the end of summer yesterday, a consequence of geography. The seagulls calling hang on St. Christopher, hang on. After, we drove west, chasing the sun and I could hear your voice from somewhere down the road, rusty tin-can-metal grinding, hang on St. Christopher through the smoke and the oil, buckle down the rumble seat, let the radiator boil. And I thought maybe the best days are already done with me. I can sometimes see the gurney in the rear-view and I’ve got nothing left to say.

But Tom, I really want to know about that Halloween orange, and if Frank ever made it past the Hollywood freeway. How those wild years metastasized into a broken chimney letting in the unbearable silence of evening sky. Did you know that Frank was incapable of living in the present, the now is too far, too soon? Did you, Tom, when you wrote Frank into being, did you know he’d be right here inside me like some disease? Did you? But oh the music of it! Gyroscopic, operachi romantico, though there is nothing romantic about a gallon of gas and I don’t think Frank was ever innocent, even when he dreamt.

Tom, you built me a house with no roof so I could look up and see the great wolf coming. So I could see the light and the darkness as a consequence of these restless years.

Tom, the answer is always yes.

Yesterday the sun was on my back like a lung pressing breath into me, a consequence of time. And I thought, everyone is happy but just for a moment, just for that one instant between the time you light the match and the time you throw it.

I stood and watched the end of summer. When we got to our car there was a small raccoon under the back wheel. We wrapped ourselves in towels and lay next to him. The pavement was a country on fire. We sang hold on, hold on, you gotta hold on. And you know what, Tom, it was now, and the sun let go, and I remembered that it was exactly 111 days until Christmas and that I had to hold on and that the answer is always yes. And that tomorrow is a farce and that every birth and every death is the birth of sorrow. And we lay next to him and summer was ending and I could feel the roughness of your hands wrapped around an idea I had.

Tom, I think a roofless house is like a story without an ending. Everyone is dying to get out and the answer is always yes.

I don’t want to talk about Frank anymore. It’s today but in my heart it’s yesterday and I can feel summer stretching to reach me, but that’s no way to live. I once put a needle in my arm and that too was a place, wild and unreachable. And there was St. Christopher, holding up the moon as if it were a gun. And Tom, I hope, I really hope that I don’t fall in love with you.