“Why did you have to tell me that,” her voice echoes through my head, “why did you have to go and do that, Bill?”
I wish I could reach down in that quiet place and enter the glass house of my soul. That Interior Castle Teresa of Avila speaks of in her writings. That inner room, that nexus, where we can meet Infinity face-to-face. Wander in and sit at the feet of Jesus and ask him to talk to her for me. And ask her forgiveness. Explain to her why I said what I said. She probably wouldn’t hear me. It would register in her spirit, but not in her body-soul mind.
I want her to contact me, respond, and ask why? I want to tell her I did it, because I couldn’t hold onto it any longer. Then I bungled it as it came out of my mind. I tried to trivialize it. Make it appear like it was no big deal that I did such things all the time. It was probably the twisty-tie thing that solidified it in her mind that I was serious.
She did tell me once that I was intense when I talked. She didn’t know how to respond and felt intimidated or intellectually inadequate. I apologized and said I never meant any harm. I was always happy to talk to her. I was always relaxed in her presence. Even when she’d go all girly and fly about the room like a headless chicken. In the wake of her chaos there was always a calm serene lake following her around. I liked her just the way she was.
When I first met her, she annoyed me. She reminded me of a black poodle, because of her hair and stature. Sparky a friend called her. She is a real firecracker. I don’t know when it changed. She grabbed a hold of my heart and I was hooked like the prize sturgeon the Old Man of the Sea caught.
“Why did you have to tell me that?” I hear again. Over and over like scratched record. "We had a good thing going on. We were pals. I thought you were my best friend.”
Before I left for Seattle, she said with a warm smile, “perhaps you’ll meet a woman there!” A voice in my head screamed “No! I want to be with you. I want to be the father of your children. I want to provide for you as a husband.”
I wanted our parting to be like it was in the movies. Where she says, “I didn’t see it for the longest time. And now that you’re leaving I see how much I love you.” She’d be crying and I’d fold her into my arms. Holding her up as she went limp while melting into tears. She would sob loudly. Her body convulsing with both the sorrow of our parting and joy of finding me. I would mummer quiet nonsensical syllables into her ear while brushing though her hair with my fingers
Then she would lean back and look up into my face and I would kiss her gently on her forehead. She would look at me unashamedly, eyes beet red, and I’d wipe away her tears with my fingers. Then bring them to my lips and taste her sorrow and joy. She’d smile hold me tight into herself.
After drying her cries on my shirt, she’d tilt her head back inviting me to kiss her parted lips. And then when had exhausted ourselves from a tongue tangling kiss, she would murmur a staccato'd purr into my ear, "I'm ecstatic that you told me that you were in love with me; I've waited so long to hear those words, I was too shy to tell you I felt the same."
---June 25, 2001
Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open. I will be publishing literary works, explicit language pieces, and eventually a journal a relative wrote in the late 1800's detailing their journey to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. And when I gather enough submitted works from other people, I will be cobbling together an e-anthology called Randomly Accessed Poetics.
No comments:
Post a Comment