Heating and Cooling--A Work in Progress

"Sure, come over so we can emotionally destroy one another. It's for my art." I'd said this as a joke. But I'm no longer laughing.

  

"Maybe I no longer find you smart, charming, or funny." I never said that. Not out loud. Never out loud.

"A tulip in the desert won't last long." You knew this to be true, you who claim to love nothing but your children and "hedonistic adventures." At least you love something. A man who loves something can never be truly evil.

I believe you loved me, but at the same time, somehow, deep down in my darkest heart, I also knew you played with my feelings. As if other people's feelings somehow weren't altogether real to you. As if you never trusted me to love you if I knew the truth. The truth of your fragility and terror. Life has been so cruel to you. I know. I smile and say nothing. We risk being subjected to worse cruelties.

But you have many cruelties.

I still can't escape the feeling that we've done this, all of this, before. There were portents; signs to be read and interpreted. We are familiar and yet do not know each other. Why did I even write this for you? In part, because you're so breathtakingly perfect that it makes my soul ache. I still have this fantasy of you. The perfect you. The dream I had of you and I in perfect union.

A Very Basic Misunderstanding

I realize, too late, that we have failed to understand something important. I've tried to pinpoint the exact moment of misunderstanding, but cannot. Nor am I able to discern the exact nature of this failure of understanding. I know only that it was important that we not fail. In this failure there was a decisive moment, that I cannot recall, when your heart hardened against mine and there is no going back. For us it was a point of no return. Don't worry. You can blame it all on me.

Mashup Messup Remix No More Redux

There were adventures, words, you're beautiful. Sometimes supportive, honest, intense intimacy. Too intense. Dancing in dreams. I thought you could hear me. To dance is to live. Kissing until you forgot your name. I've forgotten my name. I thought you could hear me. Messing up each others' lives. Denying the truth. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. What did it matter? Nothing else mattered. I thought you could hear me.

Dreaming, Fear, Fate

The dream is always the same, though it occurs less frequently. I awaken, within the dream, to find myself in a house I don't immediately recognize; somehow I know it is the house you and I shared. I know without knowing how I know. All I want is out.

But none of the doors open to the outside. They open into the room where I was just standing, or to other rooms and hallways. All I want is out.

I don't know how long I spend futilely opening doors, perhaps it varies each time, before I give up and accept that I am trapped. There is no way out.

A Long Drive to Nowhere

The truth is I may never know what I wanted from you. I only knew what I didn't want. I didn't want what you gave me; even if I needed it. Which sounds completely ungrateful. I'm sorry. I can't think of two more terrible words to use. I want to say, "thank you." But I can't. I'm sorry. I know you are too. I'm not sure how we ended up here. It's not what either of us wanted. And yet, here we are. We both drove us to this point.

This destination was never on my map. Maybe that's part of the problem. I wasn't looking at maps. I was too busy reading the signs. None of the signs I read pointed here. Maybe I misread. There were other signs. Portents. I left a book on the counter and fled because the pages burned my fingers. It felt accusatory, especially the section titled "LOVE TIPS." A stranger had marked the places where things fell apart. Outlined the detours and wrong turns we'd taken to end up here.

It's so easy to misunderstand. I ignore the obvious in favor of the subtext. So much between us was subtextual. We were beneath the surface before we'd even defined the outlines. I was drowning. Maybe you were too.

Today, I wanted to say I was sorry. But what difference would that make? You already know. The apologies lie between us like broken teacups we've forgotten to sweep up. We've cut ourselves open on the shards and these tiny pieces remain embedded in our skin. You'd be surprised how long a piece of splintered porcelain can remain under your skin. I had a fragment of Noritake in my palm for five years. It was too far below the surface to remove. I could feel it under the skin, but had to wait until it worked itself out. Maybe it will be like that for us too.

The Timid, the Weak, and Timorous Need Not Apply

“You only need one man to love you. But him to love you free like a wildfire, crazy like the moon, always like tomorrow, sudden like an inhale and overcoming like the tides. Only one man and all of this.” ~ C. JoyBell C.
 

The girl is a wildfire. She'll set your mind on fire and rain thunder in your dreams. She'll dance across fields in your heart like she's chasing a hurricane. And she'll run. She'll run like the tides chasing the moon. She'll slip through your fingers like quicksilver. But maybe, just maybe, if you softly sing your siren song, she'll swim to your distant shore. And moor with you, in the sea.

Thinking about a Boy

Sitting at a stoplight, gas tank on empty, thinking about a beautiful blue-eyed boy. I glance over to see the young man in the pristine white T-Bird in the next lane blowing bright pink bubblegum bubbles.

The Reader of Signs

“ever tried.
ever failed.
no matter.
try again.
fail again.
fail better.”

~ Samuel Beckett

On December 31, 2014, I was sideswiped by a hit and run driver. I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy reading the signs. He wasn't reading the signs. He aimed straight for me, then swerved at the last moment. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a fatal blow. For the next two weeks I was one of the walking dead. Mortally wounded, completely unaware of my tragic fate. Such a strange word. Fate. But there it is. I'd been frozen in place reading the signs. Portents of what was about to happen, what would happen, no matter how I tried to prevent it. It felt like déjà vu.

It felt fated.

Fate? Souls? Reincarnation? I know how you probably feel about people who use those words. Believe me, I feel the same way most of the time. New age shysters out to sell you something or woefully deluded, albeit well intentioned, tree-hugging busybodies out to save your soul. Oh yes, I was skeptical, cavalier even. I scoffed at the idea. Even Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence seemed too hippie-crystal-metaphysical for my taste. But I am speaking of the soul here. At least, mostly, metaphorically. I'd sustained a mortal wound to my spirit.

He'd dealt the death blow before and would do it again. Will do it again.

It won't kill me. Not exactly. It is a metaphorical death and rebirth. Like the phoenix, I will rise from the ashes and be reborn. Forever changed into something new.

I fell in love with words

Maybe that's why I couldn't fall in love with a person. My heart was already spoken for.

A New Beginning and an End

She had a striking tattoo. A black and white horse, in full gallop, ran along her right side from the top of her thigh to her breast. As might be surmised from the tattoo, she was an equestrian. Her large muscular thighs beautiful, powerful. She was voluptuous in every sense of the word. She was also distant, cold. Her cruel interior hidden behind an artifice of warmth. Her beauty, though difficult to define, was instantly apparent to all who met her. I loved her. But this love was a betrayal. It was not the kind of love that she desired from me. Ultimately, this was our undoing.

It's a mad world

You live in a beautiful world of perfect people and fancy parties. I'm just a girl with a broken foot writing a paper on theories of voice in literature. What is a voice anyway? How does "voice" --a physical oral and aural apparatus-- exist on the page? My book tells me that it is a construct: a physiological and metaphorical, bodily and disembodied, real and imaginary, oral and textual, uncanny, mediated, cultural affect. And so it goes... the truth from which I hide.

I'm just a regular person. Boring, quotidian, I don't even own a dryer. I eagerly await the sun to wash my clothes. A man follows you with an umbrella in the rain. 

It wasn't supposed to be this way

I will not hear from you. You will not write to me. I clean out the spam folder and learn that there are hormones to reduce belly fat, Latin singles who are dying to meet me, and a $1000, if I qualify. I wonder what I must do to qualify?

There's an algorithm that filters your messages into a separate folder so that I don't have to read them. But I check it anyway. Just as I check the spam folder. I know there won't be any messages there, other than the two old ones I saved. I don't know why I saved them. I asked you not to contact me anymore. I don't miss you, just your messages. Strange. I miss your words but not your presence. In fact, I crave your absence more than I crave your words. The fact of the folder bereft of new messages pleases me. Something inside of me breathes a sigh of relief.

Scared you a bit

Admit it. Some of this is frightening. Some of life is frightening. Slices of my life bleed through the edges of this page, smearing onto the keys, staining fingers, it gets into your eyes, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction, blurring self and other. Perhaps all boundary lines are myths.