For N.
Truth is, I want to chain you to my body. Since day One. It's true, there's no such thing as love at first sight. It's not love. It's something more akin to recognition. So what about changing the old "I fell in love with you at first sight" for a "I recognized you at first sight"? It's prettier, simpler, truer. I did, I recognized you at first sight. In the course of an instant. I recognized the way you talked, the way you walked, the things you said. There are no surprises in life is my new motto. There are only surprised people. From then on, after Day One, it was all pretty much announced. This letter that I never wrote and the ones that will follow. The nights spent breathing in your pheromones, those that you warned me, since the start, that I'd become addicted to. Oh, and I did. But not then, N. I did so much earlier, since the very beginning, since that first night drinking chai tea and giving you an unnecessary ride home, because you lived so close anyway. It was hanging there behind every silence, awkward, latent, waiting. I knew it, you knew it, we each knew that the other knew it. And yet. Latent, waiting. I see you. It is less terrifying than I thought it'd be. It feels. Lighter. Like a resolution. Like a sigh of relief. It feels light. N, I say to myself. Just that, just your name. N. And somehow, I am able to face the world again with strength. So I have to thank you. For the mere fact of your impossible existence. For the eyes of green silence that see so many things invisible to me. For your hands. For your quietude. For allowing me to care for you in the smallest, least intrusive way I could find. For the gift that it is to know that I've met my equal.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Pepper
For P.
I packed your spices today. I wrapped them in that scarf your sister gave me last winter, a discarded gift that someone else gave her over the holidays and she did't want to keep. In their place, the place where the spices used to stand, across from my bed, first thing I saw in the morning, in their place I put The Fountainhead. I pinned it to the wall, so that it's floating, half open, staring at me before going to bed, the first thing I see when I wake up. I packed away your letters and the few things you still left behind after our final farewell. Plane tickets. Those cheap earrings you got for my sisters at the artisans market because I refused to let you buy something expensive. The postcard that your lover, the one who triggered the end of us, sent me as a response to the gift I got her, those expensive earrings I got for the woman you shared a bed with during my absence. She got those earrings from me, and a few hours later went to bed with you, and a few days later wrote me a thank you note, and a few months later we broke. Funny, how life operates. The box is sitting outside my door. I still haven't decided what to do with it. Who knows, one night I might feel adding some extra pepper to my stew.
I packed your spices today. I wrapped them in that scarf your sister gave me last winter, a discarded gift that someone else gave her over the holidays and she did't want to keep. In their place, the place where the spices used to stand, across from my bed, first thing I saw in the morning, in their place I put The Fountainhead. I pinned it to the wall, so that it's floating, half open, staring at me before going to bed, the first thing I see when I wake up. I packed away your letters and the few things you still left behind after our final farewell. Plane tickets. Those cheap earrings you got for my sisters at the artisans market because I refused to let you buy something expensive. The postcard that your lover, the one who triggered the end of us, sent me as a response to the gift I got her, those expensive earrings I got for the woman you shared a bed with during my absence. She got those earrings from me, and a few hours later went to bed with you, and a few days later wrote me a thank you note, and a few months later we broke. Funny, how life operates. The box is sitting outside my door. I still haven't decided what to do with it. Who knows, one night I might feel adding some extra pepper to my stew.
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