7-31

She’s wearing a hot pink workout shirt and a sports bra--not in the sexy yoga young mother way, but in that “I no longer care” way where I suspect she was recently at the beach and this is as close as she will come to baring her aging body to the public. Her eyes are fixed on the menu over my head with intensity; I feel myself becoming almost anxious for her decision, as, evidently, serious brainpower is being utilized to reach a conclusion. I feel vaguely complicent.

He stands beside her, thin-rimmed glasses that declare his age more than any facial features might. He wears a baseball cap carelessly and smiles easily at me. I smile back, relieved. He will field her decisions for her--it will not be my responsibility.

Neither speaks, though I can sense he is waiting acutely.

He’s wearing a dark navy shirt with labeled sailboats sketched in thin white lines. It strikes me and I study it, while she studies the menu and he studies her without looking at her directly.

What brought them together?

Sailboats. Where do sailboats fit?

It’s a mystery and I want to ask. I want to isolate her, pull her to my side and whisper, “Sailboats?”

Will she laugh and toss her head? Sailboats. A silly obsession. Aren’t men funny? She rolls her eyes when he wants to talk ropes and lines and knots and navigation, but for his birthday, she books him a deep-sea fishing excursion. For Christmas it’s a crisp clear bottle and the tiny, bird’s-bone skeleton of his favorite vessel. She likes country chic or vintage cottage or some other made-up decorating trend, but the guest room has canvas curtains and blue walls and bright white anchors hung upon the wall to guard cotton robes and a seawave-themed towel.

Sailboats. She shakes her head in annoyance. More fucking sailboats.

Maybe beneath the shiny stretchy pink fabric, she wears her own boats. Perhaps it brought them together. A bolt of lightning, that shock of electricity. Sailboats? Holy shit, me too.

She orders a boring beer, after all the contemplation. He orders my favorite and sips it quickly before handing her the frosty tulip glass.

They walk to a table and out of my thoughts. My mind goes back to you. I wonder if the enthusiasm I felt for these little normal things came across. I can’t lie, my face betrays everything, and I wouldn’t if I could. But I’ve trained my reactions.

Did you know how much I loved that you gathered stones from my favorite place? Could you tell how absorbed I was in the photography documentary you suggested? Strange small things that struck me dumb. You let me watch the same show, over and over, and never complained. 

I loved your differences too. They made it more real. No human can be so perfectly suited. But, still. Your jewel-toned shirt. The way you wear shoes without socks. Lights strung around the bedroom. The way you order a flight at a new bar, and sniff the beer before drinking. How you yawn three times, sharply.  It struck me, always. Sometimes with awe. Sometimes with fear. 

It’s terrifying, to meet an inevitability. Did you feel that, for me? Was I frighteningly real?

I wish you were braver.

7-29

Catharsis in newness, in unfamiliar territory, in noise and drinks that taste like wild truffles and cold stools that hurt to sit on. 

Freedom in confession and acceptance. I lay the words on the table, knowing they will be examined without judgment, and it makes it easier to bring them to the light. I see them before me, catching the light.

They have left me and become their own entity, and I can see them for what they are now. Dark crystals. Smooth green glass in sand. Sharp fragments of calcium and salt from the rough walls of a wet cave. They look soft and inviting but they abraid the palm of my hands as I lay them down.

Some are warm like new bread, some hot as the coiled braid on a stovetop. Others glitter and chill like seawater.

Laid out before me, I sift through them gingerly, using the pads of my fingers, stir them around. There’s a truth in them, but it’s a harried, frenetic mess.

I push them apart and slide them into groups, compulsively organizing, picking through. 

Dread wells up as I slowly sort the answers free.

7-27

It’s easy to forget. Waves of memory creep up, drowning the champagne effervescence that tickles my blood when I forget. 

I wish I could forget. Let the champagne pop and wash the slate clean. Start over. Forgive. 

But how many times have I tried that now? It defies my strategic mind to let go of the things that hurt me. It defies the animal instinct that twines like wire through my spine, keeping me tense and alert. 

I play through scenarios, brilliant Disney fantasies where I release the past and embrace the glorious bright future and bluebirds come sing on my shoulder and my hair never gets split ends and smells like cupcakes. There are things I would need from you to forget, and I will never get those things. 

I hinted. I asked. I begged. I yelled. I left. I came back. I left. I came back, hopeful. Stupid.

You will not give me those things. At some point I have to close my eyes and go inside and acknowledge that is because you do not want to.

It would be so easy, I say to myself. I want to make it easy for you. I want to lay it before you and show you the way. If is not clear I will show you another way, and you will try this other path, not discouraged, eager, and you will pick up my pieces and hold them gently, and I will see that, and your mistakes will not hurt me, they will make me laugh and smile.

Your effort will keep the bubbles alive because I am happier sitting in silence and introspection with you than anyone, and when you speak, when the walls drop and we both forget to be harsh and suspicious, the simplest things glow in my head like candle warmth.

Your knuckles, your bare feet.

The words you say when you forget make my brain light up and spin, recognizing kin.

I forget too, for a brief sweet moment. Wildflowers and honey, before the scythe drops.

7-26

How is this something we all go through?

So much of the world was blocked off for me. I am filled with a new awe, a sympathy, admiration, for the human race.

I am guilty of misjudgment. I am full of remorse. I was full of assumptions.

I was pompous with my strength. I was confident in my surety.

I didn’t know or understand.

Around me, people work, live, walk, and I stare at them with wonder, these magnificent creatures of brick and mortar. How many times have they rebuilt themselves? I judged their cracks because my foundation had never crumbled, but I stand in the rubble now and I want to ask for their forgiveness and their aid. My hands are smeared with dirt and full of stones and I do not understand how to piece it back together.

I have been trying, but my shelter won’t seem to hold for long.

All around me, people who have overcome this. I never knew love but I knew I would recognize it when it came. I am ashamed of my naivety. I saw love and I assumed it had come to stay. Silly girl. Foolish girl. Around me, warriors who cried themselves to sleep years ago, or still, or a hundred times. They smile and move through the world. 

How is this something we share? How is this something our minds and bodies become accustomed to?

What horrors have we wreaked that the gods dole out such a punishment, and we smile and move on through the world, smiling, smiling, absorbing the blows.

7-25

I am jealous. I am resentful.

People who say, “Just trust me.”

What backgrounds have they come from? It throws me, my jaw drops.

Just trust me.

You have to Just Trust Me.

Listen. I don’t have to Just Do anything. This is my lesson. This is what I carry with me.

Trust is earned. Affection is earned. Love is earned. These things must be cared for and kept and cultivated. I am not exempt from this--I do not demand them and think I do not have my own self to prove. Sometimes I fall flat. Sometimes I am too tired to fight for you or for me or for both at once.

The ones that stick with me, they understand. They recognize effort. They know when I need a rest and do not resent me for it. 

Strange, the ones that have proven themselves to me. I did not expect them. Some of the ones that failed me, I did not expect them either.

Mistakes are made but life is still a line, a scale. You are a good person or you are a bad person. You are a person to trust or you are not. You are honest or you weigh your truth before speaking it. In between, shades of grey. Still, the feather is placed, the scale tips. The weight of your intention and your desire to change for the better, where does that fall?

Will it matter, when your heart is laid out bare to see and judge, that you meant to be better?

7-24

I don’t know what words I will give how I feel about this. 

Regret. Frustration. Sadness. Bittersweet. Loss. Guilt. 

I hold onto the words, sensing their weight, but refusing to lay them down. I have not chosen the one. Is there just one? Can I encompass all that this was in one perfect sentiment? 

It’s like getting the correct lottery numbers for the day’s before. Brushing against Heaven. I sense the opportunity, so close, I know how it could be, but it’s not for me.

I don’t have control, do I? I dissected, I experimented, I tested various principles and stood back to observe the results, but no matter how I studied, you eluded me. My hands are burned, my eyes are red, and I know I failed to break through. I wore myself out. Maybe things would have been better for me if I could laugh and set aside my analyzing mind, and shake my shoulders and let your moods roll off me, but I cannot pretend to be someone else. I would have liked to be, for you.

Well, a lie. I would have liked you to be someone else, in a way. I would have liked you to speak the words and show the actions that clarified you for me. I was passionately curious, I would not have stopped, if I could have broken through. The imprint of your walls is on my heart and my hands and my head. I didn’t think I was asking for much, but it was asking for you to give me something you couldn’t, I suppose.

A sense of panic now. The Wheel is turning. The card came up. Time is over. I have no energy left to resist as life carries us onward. We are broken creatures trying to be whole. We deserve that. We both do.

I’ll hold my words inside me and give into the tide as it washes us toward better days.

7-20

The familiarity is the most dangerous.

When people think of love, I wonder what they envision. Butterflies, passion? Stepping into the mind of another?

For me, it was comfort. To be calm and breathe. It’s what I always seem to be seeking--in life, in love. A settling in the stomach, a slowing of the blood. I am always on-edge when I am not alone.

Your heart beats so fast, a lover told me once, pressing his ear against my chest as I sat on a split-rail fence.

Nervousness has become the largest portion of who I am. I hardly notice anymore. On a beach, sun setting, I took the proffered joint and felt my internal circuitry slow. I wondered if I might be dying, to feel so calm.

When I was younger, love was excitement, adventure. Someone who moved me.

Now I wish for someone who lets me be still. Stability. Support. A touchstone for my anxious fingers.

You were always moving away from my hands, but still, they know you. They recognize your shape and texture, and they reach out. For a moment, I forget. Familiarity settles over me and I forget you are not mine (were you ever?) and I forget to be worried and tense.

It’s dangerous, the way my breathing slows and my body relaxes.

I wonder if I am dying.