Everything I want to say to you and everything I won’t is
all tangled up underneath my skin, sometimes tugging to get out sometimes
fighting to stay in, clinging to my bones and tangling between my teeth, torn
up and tied together and melodramatic as all hell but that’s what I get for
reading too many crappy romances and I know life is never like the stories but
knowing and feeling are two different things and at least in the stories
everything gets worked out in the end, you know that it is going to end and probably how but real life doesn’t work like
that when you’re living the story yourself you’re the one feeling everything
and you’re that character that the whole audience is screaming at mentally get a fucking clue already but locked
behind the fourth wall you have no idea, you’re just stumbling around adrift
amidst staggering heaps of dramatic irony and coincidence and comedy and more
than a little tragedy because this is life, after all.
You switch from first person to second back to first when
you’re talking to yourself, monologuing out your inconsequential pain because
who are you, really? Who am I? We are no less than the children of the
universe, the trees and the stars, sure, but we are also no more – a mayfly is
the child of the universe, a midge, a tiny speck on your windshield with no
mouth or digestive system, no purpose except to make more of itself and rise to
its highest level of maturity only to dance helplessly on the breeze, drifting
mindlessly toward the light before becoming part of something else’s snack in
its last and only night on earth. You and I are the mayflies, the midges, and
the world is the snapping turtle the seagull the bat the fish mouthing at the
air missed that one got another one oh
well bite again got it and snapping us up only to move on to our neighbors,
our wives, our husbands and fathers and sisters and grand-uncles because the
world swallows everyone sooner or later and all we have left is whatever spawn
we managed to dump into the creek before we set out on our first and only
flight.
I want to tell you that I miss you and I hate you and I want
to write poetry for you and before you and after you but you’re not really the
type to inspire poetry or write it and I remember when you told me you were
going to try to write a poem in Spanish for me, my favorite language and one I
speak and read and write much better than you but that was before I knew what
you tasted like, how your breath squeaks when you’re falling asleep, what your
freckles look like from six inches away without my glasses or yours and how
your hand fits against the curve of my hip and your warmth on cold nights and
the one time I woke up next to you on the day we said goodbye for the next
month and a half and when I saw you again it just wasn’t the same, the ache of
wanting to wake up next to you had faded and these days I find myself
forgetting what your voice sounds like, I have to look at your pictures to
remember every part of your face at once, I can pretend you imagine you conjure
you but you’re a faded watercolor compared to how the acrylic and oil mural of
you used to shine across the insides of my eyelids in greens and blues and
reds.
These days I find myself half-hoping I’d just wished you so
I don’t have to figure out how to talk to you again. It was easier before we
said those words, before I told you how I felt, sick of keeping it inside never
getting the right moment to say it (swinging me around in my room, carpet soft
under our feet as you boosted me taller even than you and it was too early, too
soon so I just kissed you, half-laughing and half-scolding but we both knew I
didn’t mean it when I giggled put me down
then tickling each other on your couch, just laying there for hours and
ignoring the movie we said we’d watch, feeling your weight on mine and resting
my head on folded arms across your chest, feeling your breath in my hair as we
both dozed before your roommate came home) and not sure if you felt the same,
not wanting to put you on the spot the way he
did to me but it had been three months not two weeks surely if this wasn’t what
I’d been looking for then it was close enough but I think I scared you off, it
was easier before those three words that you returned to me before you left but
quickly, hastily, maybe just because it was easier than saying no not yet like I had once upon a time
but I lied to him I never said it because I never would have meant it and I
meant it when I said those words to you but I don’t know if you spoke the truth
to me in return.
It was easier even before that, when we hadn’t said anything
and were still dancing around each other and you texted me when I woke up and I
said good night :) every night before
I closed my eyes and you called me your Spanish rose and my heart melted
because you meant it when you called me beautiful and you knew me and I knew
you and it was new and strange and wonderful because this, now, finally, this
was what I had been missing, this was what we hadn’t had before and I wanted
more, wanted everything you could give to me and that I could give to you. Those
first weeks were wonderful but I was afraid, I had something now that I didn’t
want to spoil, something I actually cared about unlike before and I was too
careful, too cautious, too afraid of upsetting something between us between my
friends and yours that could have taken far more of a beating than I thought I
could put it through. And so I was cautious and busy and stressed and
overworked and your couch was a haven where I could just sit for a while and
be, not do anything but feel your arm around me, away from my empty room and
not too uncomfortable with your roommate and there was the feeling of not-so-easy-as-before but those last few
days were magic and we always found ourselves some time, not really talking
about it because neither of us wanted to say goodbye before we had to.
We made no promises. Maybe we should have, maybe then I
wouldn’t be so worried when it’s been days since I’ve read a word from you, weeks
since I’ve heard your voice, months since I’ve felt your breath on the back of
my neck and your arm around me as you pulled me closer to your chest. Maybe It’s
nothing. Maybe it’s everything. All I know is what I don’t know anymore and if
it’s your fault or mine or maybe nobody’s and all I wish is that things could
be as they were before but the wheel turns and the mayflies dance and we are
eaten, my love, we are eaten by the world bit by bit by bit and maybe you are
the part of me that is taken in this bite and maybe I am the part of you that
you wish to give away, but all I want to do is dance with you for whatever time is left before you are blown away by the drifting winds.
All I want to do is dance with you. Just once.
