THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

HOME Written By David Steven Simon Thehollywoodragepage.blogspot.com I live in the ghost house of home a prayer silent,  floating citadel of walls which hold me close  like the Swan Lake ballerina arms of my invisible mom,  who is now a ghost as well. The difference, is she does not know her present condition.   She thinks  it is still her job to clean my face with a freshly licked Kleenex and cook like the first mate of a slave’s ship who is expected to work until the bone shows through. Despite all the wisdom which has been carved  like initials into the tree, which in the ancient times of us, when we were still pink bud peaches and could not calculate the true distance of tomorrow, whispered secrets  which were as big as the moon whose pendulum swing waited  like the hawk-eyed dog who watched the door always on the look out for the stunning final act emergence of you, the one she loved the most. And although

I have not spoken to my dad in over forty years. Years ago I turned my back on him and walked away and that was that. No, we didn’t have a fight. He died when I was 25 and that walk away came right on the beat at the conclusion of the service in the cemetery after we lowered him with sway and love deep into the womb of the ground, like a treasure chest, ceremonially buried in that family secret place that only we would ever know the location of. When you bury a parent, time suddenly becomes unfathomable, unreliable, it suddenly faints away like a delicate socialite onto a waiting divan, from the searing heat of loss, Our parent’s final breath pushes us into a dimension of exquisite separation and inextinguishable pain, where everything still feels just within our reach but in truth is now as far away as the weeping moon. The cemetery only knows formality. The weathered stones, which, like the canvas of our souls, have epitaphs and life stories carved deeply into th