Do you remember that night, back in August? We were at the park, near the river where you always told me the rats were as big as chichuahuas. You told me that so I’d be scared, and find solace in your arms. I believed it for the same reason.
We lay on the old beach towel under the willow in what I had come to believe as ‘our spot.’ The river had that dank, late-summer smell to it and it was too sultry for even the crickets to do more than give half-hearted chirps every now and again. We had a six pack of Budweiser that some older guy had bought for us when you threw in the extra $20–money I’d made babysitting. It was too hot to do more than lay side by side. Even our teenage hormones were dazed by the heat.
That was the night that you first told me about Beth. Even now, the name makes my gut clench.
I remember that you’d been distracted, drinking your beer fast and crunching the cans before pitching them into the heavy water. I felt a similar clench in my stomach. Something was bothering you and I was scared you were going to end things. I had always known you would break up with me, because I’d always known you were too good to be true. But it had only been a year that we’d been together, and I was hoping for more time.
Of course, you didn’t break up with me. Not really.
It would be a good arrangement, you explained. You and Beth would be together at your school, and I could have a boyfriend at my school. Nights, summers, weekends…it would be just you and I.
I remember panic rising in my throat like vomit. I was confused and felt like I would suffocate in the humid air. Wasn’t I enough? I wondered. I had given you absolutely everything. I did everything, anything, you asked of me and you told me that you loved me. I had nothing left to give and yet you wanted more.
I didn’t speak at first. It was like when we’d first started dating, and I couldn’t speak to you in front of other people. I was so awed by your presence and the effect you had on me back then. This time, I was simply speechless. I sipped my beer and pulled a cigarette out of the pack next to me. When I fumbled with my lighter and you took the cigarette from my lips, put it in your own mouth and lit it and then put it back in mine. Wordlessly.
I dragged deep and finally looked into your eyes.
Dangerous territory, those eyes of yours. Dark brown with flecks of yellow near the irises, they acted like a magnet to my soul. It was no lie when I told you that sometimes, looking deep into your eyes, I heard music. You told me you heard the same when you looked at me.
I sighed. Of course I’d do it. Anything for you, up to and including giving you away for five days a week.
I didn’t say it like that though. I didn’t utter a word.
Instead, with the same magic that pulled us together the second we met just over a year ago, I drew you to me–or you drew me to you—who knows how to define that magnetic pull we shared.
Our kiss was slow and hesitant, more like the first kiss than the thousandth. Your question, my answer. Was there much difference between a hello and goodbye? Did it matter?
We made love under the willow that night, and I raked my nails down your back as I came. I wanted to leave my mark on you. This girl–this Beth–she might have you at school, but I had you here. Now.
You shuddered when I broke your skin and I felt you release inside me.
We lay there for quite some time, our breathing slowing, our legs entwined. Eventually you leaned up on your elbows and put your nose to mine. “I love you” you whispered.
That would have been the perfect time for me to give you all the reasons why you shouldn’t play this game. You should choose, me or her. You shouldn’t ask me to give you so much freedom. What boy in my school even compared to you? No one had those eyes, that magnetism that sensuality that called out my own desire.
But of course I stayed silent on all this.
“I love you too” I replied.
Of course I did.
I am tired of being a strong woman today.
There, I said it.
I have carried my children, my husband, my family and my friends for so long. I give everything I have to them all.
I spend at least 36 hours a week caring for my patients and when I come home at night, I tend to feel empty.
I am tired and my back hurts.
Some would argue that finding inner happiness depends on relying on one’s own sense of ’strength of self.’
Some might say that depending on those outside of us to help us find what we lack inside is a measure of neediness, codependence, or some otherwise identified basic fault.
Is it wrong to admit, as a person and a woman, that there are times when it necessary to be the one carried, instead of the one doing the carrying?
Is it safe to admit when the burden seems too heavy, and the steps too steep?
The fear, at least for me, is that admitting a need and having no one fill it is worse than keeping quiet about it. Better to soldier on through, little cowgirl. Buck up, take it like a woman.
Inside it feels like a highwire act. How much of me is left, and how can I best spread it around?
People call it looking for balance.
I call it being tired.
I am tired of being a strong woman today.
I watched the waves crash on the beach. The moonlight rippled on the unsettled water and I licked salt-flavored lips. Even up here on the 10th floor, I could feel the pull of the ocean, the magic of the tides.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked him. We were both leaning our elbows against the balcony railing, our shoulders just a few electric inches from each other.
“Yeah,” he said distractedly, not looking away from the water.
I was silent, allowing the rhythm of the waves to calm my mind and settle my frayed nerves.
I stole a sideways glance at him. He was still starting out at the ocean, his brow slightly furrowed and lips pursed.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He shrugged and turned to me. “Yeah, I guess. Just thinking.”
I nodded. I understood how the ocean could pull at one’s mind, churn up thoughts from one’s own hidden depths. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He looked away quick to the left, towards the water, and then back again. I felt a catch when our eyes met. I could see the wall go up in his thoughts. “Nah,” he said dismissively. “It’s nothing. Work stuff.”
“Ah,” I said, turning away so I wouldn’t have to be faced with his boundaries. “Ok.”
We were silent but for the sound of the waves as they crashed higher. High tide would be coming soon, and the wind was picking up. Somewhere in the darkness a gull screeched. I shivered.
“Are you cold?” He asked.
“A bit,” I said, surprised into honesty by the fact that he had noticed.
“Here,” he said and reached his arm out.
Almost against my own will, I allowed him to put his arm around my shoulders. I felt the heat of his hand on my upper arm and I smelled a hint of his deodorant and shampoo. I slowly felt myself relax.
“Better?” he asked, smiling at me.
“Yeah,” I said, returning the smile.
We turned simultaneously back towards the waves as they crashed higher up the beach, lost in our own thoughts as the sand was slowly swallowed by the rising tide.
Sweet like sugar and tasting
like the insides of a sour candy after I’ve
sucked all the tartness away.
Holding onto me like warmth
Like the smoke from a fire that I smell
the next morning in my hair.
I feel you breathe
I see what you see thru your eyes as they are
clouded with me.
I hear what you hear and I listen closely to
the words left unsaid, the spaces
between the words are where the real
conversation lies.
I lie with you nightly, hearing the
beat of your heart, the
rustle of your hair as it grows and the
edgy sound of silence as you dream.
We dream together and I can almost reach you
in the dreamtime, the quiet time,
in the spaces between us.
So what if you were, say, dying…the end of the road was visible.
What if you had regrets? What if you had things you wanted to do that you hadn’t done.
Of course you’d try to do them, right?
I mean, within bounds, provided it didn’t hasten the dying.
Everyone has a dying wish, or so I’ve heard.
So what, then, if your last wish…your dying wish… the one thing you’ve always wanted to do…what if that one thing was hurtful to someone else?
Would you do it?
I don’t mean kill someone, or maim or otherwise physically harm someone.
But what if something you did..that you did because you have always wanted to do it and it’s literally now or never…what if that something would make someone else sad?
Would you do it, knowing that you wouldn’t have to be around to clean up the mess?
Would you do it, knowing that it was something you’re literally at this point dying to do?
Would you not do it, sacrificing your happiness for that of another?
Would you do it if no-one would ever know?
Then say you found out you weren’t dying, but you’d already done it.
And loved it.
Would you do it again?
I dreamed of a friend that died while I was still in high school. I was my age I am now and he was young…he was about 20 when he died, I was probably 17. I was slow dancing with him in a reality where he was still alive but I knew he would die. I asked him if he loved his life and he said yes. I asked him if he had any inkling of his future and he said “I think I know what you are leading up to and I know it.” I told him he was a fine young man, and that when I was teen, I had a crush on him (true). He smiled and kissed me and said “Just because God gives you one person to love and stay with, it doesn’t mean that you can’t love more than that one person.”
I hugged him and the dream ended.
Last night I dreamed that I had plant cuttings that I knew would flourish in my garden. I went out to plant them and you said that they wouldn’t grow. I told you I felt they would and planted them anyway, and then spent the rest of the dream trying to get them to grow to prove you wrong because you kept telling me that I wouldn’t be able to get them to grow. I woke up before I found out if they were rooted or not.
The slip of elusive words
the stumble over what should be even ground.
I feel myself tilt with the
question unasked
and my words hit the floor
like the thud of cement.
An echo of silence that
chases me through my dream-corridors
and leaves me ultimately stranded.
Alone,
with nothing to wrap around my freezing shoulders
but the threadbare memory of touch
and a whisper of tears.
And she said “I just feel sad”
And he said “Don’t”
And she said “But I miss what we used to be”
And he said “Its not worth it.”
And she said “I just want to be held”
And he said “Wanna have sex?”
And she cried.
And he didn’t notice.
How do you put it into words, that loss?
The realization of all that’s gone before is so much more
than what is left to come?
I felt it again last night, that
bittersweet melancholy,
that
slow drip of tears heralding yet another passage.
Time never used to move fast enough but now
now…
now cruel time is racing by.
I used to count in decades,
Now I count in days.
How long until I count in breaths?
*
The glorious days of wonder
have all passed by now.
The dreams and secret mysteries
Are uncovered and exposed for the poseurs they are.
The greatest truth is the truth untold,
the biggest lie is that its fun to grow up.
Wrinkles start slowly now around my eyes while
my daughter’s flesh is firm and unlined.
As it should be.
But I once was her.
As I move out of mother and into my crone years,
I grasp feebly at the last strings of youth.
Old love poems and memories
Serve now not only as reminders of what I once was
But also serve to bring on the bitter tears…
salt trails down my slowly wrinkling cheeks
and memories of better times that would be far less hurtful
if they could only be
forgotten.
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