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.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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.
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.
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.
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