Journey

"Who are they?", she asked. The photo was black and white and stained with time, edges curling like aged Parmesan above the knife. They were the three of us, standing on the Jersey shore in 1957. We had not eaten a regular meal in six months. I stared at myself staring at myself. I had to hold my trunks up with one hand. I counted my ribs -- considered my frame.

Later there was Lake Luzerne and Lake George, blue water, clear as molten glass, and clean air. I dove to the bottom. Waves chopped at my face when I came back, and broke harmlessly away. I scrubbed with Ivory soap -- it floats. My skin was fresh, clean. Much later there were those of us who danced and swam naked under stars and the full moon.

Helen Raspa's face had been burned. In Highland Park at age three she had tip-toed to the stove and brought a pan of boiling stew onto her face. The skin melted permanently down onto her neck. She could not hold her mouth closed, and we all looked away. We were in the fourth grade. She had sad, terrified eyes....always looking for a doorway. Away from us. I still wonder if she ever found that way.

People stared at me, too, only they didn't know why. I watched them pass, in the city, in the plate-glass, looking back, looking down. Anywhere but there, anyone but them. Not yet grown, I prayed for normalcy and got only silence. Under other hands, other skin, I was broken and repaired, only to have my body rebel again and again. I had no way to know.

Most misinterpret his meaning. Read again the poem you think you know. There was no road less traveled. Both were "just as fair". Each barely discernible in the wood. He speaks it plainly, describes it clearly for all to see. The choice -- ultimately -- was a mere whim, and without more than the briefest consideration from the poet. A path, once chosen, exists of itself -- there is no other. It's a myth we use to confer the illusion of control. Most choices are thus or thrust.

"It's a tricky one", he said. And laughed. He said he would sigh, and later he did. I think I know how he felt -- people create their own meaning.