Solstice

You and I, we've reached our solstice. I am finally at the furthest distance out of your orbit. Can I resist the gravitational pull?

I'm getting stronger, day by day. I need you less, I want you less.

I've been waiting for this moment. I haven't felt this alive in ages. It's as if the blood had stopped, but now, it's pouring back, like a dam has broken.

I went outside in the dead of night to stare at the eclipse. It was freezing, and even in the middle of downtown, breathtakingly quiet. The moon was blood red.

It's funny that the longest, darkest night is also the brightest.

The Deep End

(Also posted at IndieInk, December 2010.)

It was hot and we were restless. We roamed around, looking for trouble. The swimming pool caught his eye. He grabbed my hand and pulled me in that direction.

“It’s been closed for hours. We’ll get in trouble.”

“Not if we’re quiet.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.”

He looked at me with a wicked grin.

“Or towels.”

He shrugged, and then took off his clothes and jumped in. I hesitated, but then stripped down to my bra and panties. “Really?” he laughed, and then splashed me. I jumped in the deep end.

The water was refreshing at first, still slightly warm from the day’s sun. I floated aimlessly on my back, lost in thought, while he swam up and down the length of the pool. Occasionally I would steal a glance at his muscular arms.

We stayed in the pool for a long time, too long. My teeth started chattering; my body shivered. He noticed and came up to me, grabbing me in a bear hug. I had never noticed how strong he was, how warm he was, before that moment. He kissed my neck and shoulder; I lay my head against his chest, and time stopped. I didn’t want to be the one to end the magic.

Finally, without words, he grabbed my hand and led the way out of the water, to the locker room, all the way to the back to the showers. He turned the hot water on, and held me up against the wall, kissing me, more and more aggressively. I could feel the cool tile pressing into my back. I held on to him tightly, not because I thought he’d drop me, but because I wanted to stay in that embrace and melt into him. “This is what letting go feels like,” I thought to myself.

All these years later, on hot nights when I can't sleep, this is the memory that fills my head. I wonder where he is now, what he is doing. I wonder if he's lying awake somewhere, feeling the heat, remembering. I hope it's one of those things he can't forget either.

Sleeping In

(Also posted at IndieInk, July 2011.)


I lingered in bed this morning because of the holiday. I reflexively reached my hand across to the other side, forgetting that you're not there anymore. Remember all the hours we spent here? Do you think about it at all? For me, on days like this, it's like you never left. Your ghost lingers -- the ghost of us lingers. It haunts me.

I was never entirely sure that I loved you until the day you left. I suspected, but I was never certain until that instant. Maybe it's because I only really love things that are too broken to salvage, like the furniture I insist on rescuing from my neighbors' trash or the ratty old sweater that my mom wore when I was a kid. I see the most beauty in the imperfections and the history that they represent. And so, only when I had a complete historical narrative of our past and present and future could I see that it was, indeed, love.

It's more than that, though: I only knew that I loved you when I knew that it would never be. I only love the unattainable, the mysterious, the forbidden. I don't like realities -- the Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, the rote, the routine, the mundane. I like the Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays, the late nights and late mornings and the lazy afternoons, the departure from the norm and the potential for the unexpected. And so, I love the holidays. I just loved them a little bit more when you were here too.

Running away

I pretended that I was asleep until I heard the sound of your key in the lock. As soon as the coast was clear, I got up from the bed, walked into the closet, grabbed my backpack, and started putting all of my clothes in it. I didn't have much at the time, but still, there wasn't a lot of room in the bag. So I went to the kitchen and grabbed a grocery bag. I put as much stuff in it as I could fit.

With every echo, every noise, I had to catch my breath, waiting for you to storm back into the house, to ask what I was doing. But you didn't, and I was in the clear.

It felt like an eternity, but I was finished packing within 10 minutes. I thought about making the bed, the way you always had me do it every morning before we left the house, despite the fact that I always argued that it was wasted effort. "Fuck it," I thought, and left it exactly the way it was.

I grabbed my car keys and headed to the door, not entirely certain of where I would be going next, or whether you would try to come after me. I wasn't sure you cared enough to follow, but I was entirely sure that you'd be angry. I still hated making you angry. I shuddered at the thought.

I locked the door from the inside, pulled it shut, and left. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. I knew I'd be okay.

Dear Narcissus

You keep saying you love me. Tell yourself that if it makes you sleep better at night. I know the truth.

You don't love me; you don't even know me. You love it when I do and say the things you like. You love it when I provide a sounding board for your thoughts, your ideas, your philosophies. But you get frustrated when I don't do those things. I am neither a puppet nor an echo chamber. If you loved me, you'd like it when I disagreed with you or did something unexpected. But you don't and that's why this is not love.

If it was love, I'd feel better about the sacrifices I've made for you -- if it was love, they wouldn't feel so much like sacrifices. If it was love, I'd feel supported, not suppressed. If it was love, I'd feel like we were partners or equals. If it was love, it wouldn't feel so much like a one-way street.

If it was love, I'd be searching for a reason to stay and not looking for a reason to leave.

So I repeat: You keep saying you love me. But it's not love.

What you love is the way I make you feel. What you love is the reflection of yourself that you see in my eyes. That's not love -- that's narcissism.

If it was love, you'd let me go.

Little Lies

He grabbed one of my braids in his hand. "With your hair like this," he said, "You look like Pocahontas. Especially since you're so tan."

"Well you know," I retorted, "The Jews and the Native Americans are very close. Practically cousins."

He looked at me quizzically. "Really?"

"No. Not even close. Did you really think I was serious?" I laughed. "Just about the only thing they have in common is that they both tend to vote Democrat."

He pulled me closer. "I would have believed you. I believe most things you say."

"You shouldn't. It's all bullshit. Most everything people say is utter bullshit. And lawyers? We're professional bullshit artists."

"Not you." He touched my face. "Your face is so honest. I trust you."

At that moment, I almost warned him. "Don't believe me, not a word. Nothing I say is true. It's all a lie. Run away before you get hurt." But I kept my mouth shut.

Sometimes silence is the only truth.

The Games We Play

After all these years, I see your name on my caller-ID, and I still don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Do I want it to be you on the line; the same voice it's always been; the same words that weren't enough then and are even less now? Do I want to give up this endless game of cat-and-mouse? Do I want to stop being pursued and for once -- maybe -- just let you win? Or do I want it to end once-and-for-all and just let you fade into oblivion like those who came after you?

The truth is obvious, at least to me. I have a soft spot for you, for this game that we keep playing. It's a chink in my armor. Maybe it's because you knew me before the armor was built. But really, I think it's because the armor was built because of you. And that maybe I designed it with a lock that only fits your key -- yet still, you can't figure out how to open it. But that's because you've always been a blunt instrument, and I've always been a complicated puzzle. That is our greatest tragedy.

Scylla and Charybdis

(Also posted at IndieInk, July 2010.)

You look at me from across the room with a smile in your eyes but not on your face. You approach, and I am conscious of your breath, mere inches from me. You accidentally-on-purpose brush up against me, or touch my hand as I go to gesture. This is the undertow that keeps pulling me in; you are the vortex.

It’s the things unsaid that echo in my mind; the words just underneath the surface. They imprison us; we are imprisoned by them. It’s as if our vocal cords are paralyzed. You can’t say it; I won’t say it. And you’re scared and I’m scared and together we’re even more scared. We can’t admit what everyone else has long since realized. If you would just tell me then I could let you in – I would tear down my walls for you if you would just ask. But you won’t ask, and I am tired of being your second choice.

I clenched my teeth when he touched me for the first time; I shuddered the first time he kissed me. You know how it is: wanting what you can’t have, not wanting what is right there in front of you. I wish I could say that I made the right decision. But you and I both know that’s not how this story ends.

Quitting Time

She walked in to the office that Wednesday knowing that she had a meeting, and knowing exactly how it was going to go, from beginning to end. What they didn’t know was that, when it did, indeed, reach the end, she was finally going to tell them that the job was ridiculous, that they were ridiculous, and that her life was no longer going to be ridiculous. Freedom was to be hers, at last.

Somehow, she managed to refrain from smiling too much, but inside she was brimming with glee at the prospect. No more eighteen-hour days. No more being on call at god-knows-what hour to cater to the bizarre demands of her unreasonable superiors. She would travel, read, sleep – all of the things that she had loved so many years ago and hadn’t had a chance to do in ages.

No more sleepwalking through life. Finally, she would get a chance to live.

Roses

(cross-posted at Blah Blah Blog)

Please don't give me roses.

Don't get me wrong: Roses are a beautiful tradition, a lovely gesture. But they're just that: a gesture. They smack of trying too hard and yet, of not trying hard enough. Of trying to impress with the cost and the ostentatiousness, but not trying to find out who I am or what I really like.

Roses are too lofty, too rife with metaphor, with their soft petals amongst the thorns. They're for apologies, for Mothers' Day and Valentine's Day. They're for pageant winners, prom dates, and brides.

I am none of those things. Give me something from the earth. Give me daisies or tulips or sunflowers that fill the room with color. Give me the gardenias that remind me of my mother. Give me the night-blooming jasmine that scented the evenings of my childhood.

But please don't give me roses.

What Could Have Been But Never Was

I think about him every once in a while. How old he would be by now. (Seven.) Who he would have looked like. (You, but with greenish-blue eyes and freckles like me.) What he would think was funny. (Puns and silly words, like my mom.) What songs he would want me to sing when I put him to sleep. (Elvis, like when my dad used to sing me to sleep.) What he would like to read. (Everything, just like his mom.) But these thoughts bring little solace, and I can’t say the words out loud. No one else knew, you’re long gone, and I’m left with nothing but what-ifs and could-have-beens.

I would have been such a good mom. Everyone always tells me that I’m a natural. I know that it’s a compliment, but sometimes it feels like a smack in the face – no, worse, a kick to the gut. I see my nephew and my cousins’ and friends’ children, and no matter how much I love them – and trust me, I do love them – I am just so helplessly aware that there is one missing, one that I would have loved so much more than any of the others because he would have been mine. My perfect baby.

I know it probably didn’t seem so at first, but I didn’t really fault you for leaving after it happened. We were just so sad together all of the time: even the good moments were tinged with tears. You were so depressed, and I felt so powerless. Plus, on some level, the fact that I had been so scared and was more-than-a-little relieved after it was all over seemed to make you feel hurt and angry, but you never said anything, and instead, suffocated me with your stormy silence. Maybe you were feeling that I wanted it to end the way that it did, that I never wanted to have a child, or worse – that I never wanted to have your child. But it wasn’t that – it was that I felt like we were too young and that we had so much time and that we would be so much more prepared the next time it happened. If only there had been a next time.

I came close to telling someone about it once, but I caught myself in the nick of time. After all, he was our dream – our secret – and then, suddenly, our ghost. And now he’s nothing, and we’re nothing, and more often than I’d like to admit, I’m nothing but a mere specter of what I had been before what could have been but never was.

Broken

(Also posted at IndieInk, April 2010.)

Soon after we started, I told him that I was wounded – that I was damaged – that I was broken. He laughed it off, telling me that I was ridiculous – that I was fine and it was all in my head. But I knew better. I knew that I was not approaching decisions the same way that I had always approached them in the past, that my objectivity was compromised, that all logic had departed. I knew that when no one was looking, when no one was around, I still cried myself to sleep, and that, in those moments, I felt like I was barely keeping it together, like a shattered ceramic figurine, pieced back together and held in place with Scotch tape and Elmer’s glue. I knew that my heart was not listening to my head, and my body was ignoring both of them. Mostly though, I knew that I needed things that I had never needed from anyone before, and that they were the same things that he knew that he wouldn’t be able to give to me, maybe to anyone.

I suppose that somewhere along the way, I made up my mind that, if you care about each other enough, then the hardest part of the relationship is making the decision to stay. And to be quite frank, I’m still not sure that I disagree with that sentiment. But in this case, I approached the relationship like a challenge: I knew everything about the whole situation was wrong, and I made the conscious decision to stay. No – more than that – I made the conscious decision to disappear in him.

In fleeting moments of clarity, I knew that we were just using each other, hiding our pain in each other. And yet, I stayed. I stayed, even though I was almost certain that I didn’t love him. I stayed because he was more broken than I. I stayed because in my confused state, it felt like we could fix each other if we just tried hard enough. Or that I could fix myself if I could just be enough to make him happy.

The funny thing is that I probably would have stayed longer if he’d have let me. And to give credit where credit is due, he finally saw through my charade enough to push me away that one final time. But even now, I get a twinge of feeling that if I could only have done more, given more, been more, that maybe, just maybe, we could have worked – that I could have figured out the way to make it work. And that perhaps I could have found some small personal happiness in striving to make him happy. It’s in those moments that I am most keenly aware of just how broken I still am.