Sunday, January 30

For T.


Since we never had one of the talks you wanted to have because you said: “we need to” or, “I want you to know how I feel”, and you never sent the letter you said you wanted to write, I have only confusion. I feel adrift in space, bouncing off the moon, hitting the sun and ricocheting off stars as I try not to fall towards the space at the bottom where you will send me flying again.


I can not make sense of your love that turned to indifference so quickly. I make myself crazy trying to figure it out, even as I see that whether I understand it or not it will still be the same. And realizing this is like buckshot that shatters my heart, my ego and my hope with that one blast. Realizing that you don’t want me- no matter how much you keep telling me you do- is a hard thing.


You texted me again last night. The words “I love you” lit up my screen, and for a moment my heart. These voiceless displays of your affection that were once your arms around me are familiar now, and though once I would feel the ache that I was soaked in drain from my body-I know better now. I know those finger taps are some misfiring synapse between your brain and your heart and having reached into that steely-toothed jaw inside you so many times before, I have gnawed my hands bloody trying to free myself; only to reach in again.


It is so easy to wrap my love around you, and so hard for me to stay angry, which keeps me sliding back into your black hole gravity. I know by now though, that although you may point your confused love at me, it is my finger on the trigger. Every time I read those words and I believe you I injure myself, and each time my heart becomes smaller and less recognizable. Each time I become smaller and less recognizable. We’ve played this game before and it has no winner. Just a slow pecking away at everything that once made us real to each other.


My phone dings again and I see the words: “I miss you . . . do you love me?”, and instead of telling you that I miss you too-which I do like a cut that will not heal-I tap back on the screen: the thing about missing people is that there’s an easy cure.

We both know you live only a five minute walk away although I think I’m the only one who understands this.


You ask: what is that?


I answer: that’s like asking what the cure for hunger is.


You say: I get it . . . but you don’t do anything about it.


* * *

I want to remember us that day at your mothers. The day at the beach when I took your dog (OUR dog, you corrected me) for a long walk to give you some peace because I knew her energy was hard for you. You stood in her living room and as I crossed the room to you, you looked at me and said, yes . . . whatever it is, yes. I want to remember you that day - the way you looked at me. You still saw me as perfect.


Instead I try to remember you as you were the last time I saw you. Our bodies with each other only the night before, I could not understand your coldness and reached out and touched you asking why, trying to grasp what was not comprehendible, and when you said to me: leave Deb, just fucking leave . . . just go, I finally did, with a new resolve and anger towards you I had never felt before, which would melt away in days under the heat of my love for you.


I want to remember you the way you were that last night I saw you, but instead, all I can think of is you, the way you were that day, leaning against your mothers wall.

2 comments:

nick friedman said...

Hey Deb, I think you need to take him apart and check for broken gears. You're awesome!

Gary's third pottery blog said...

geeeeeeez....