We stood before one another in the dark, our vision slowly adjusting to the faint shapes in my bedroom, our bodies tensing to the quickening pace our hearts beat within our chests. Our breathing audible in the silence of the night.
He stopped my hand before it reached the light switch on the wall asking me to let it be; his hand clammy, warm, lingering on mine. His raspy whisper resounding in my head as his features started to take shape. His baby blue eyes were fixed on me, I knew this, but could not see them with his back to the window. The distinct scent of beer on his breath reminding me that I too drank one too many rounds earlier in the bar.
It was I who initiated this reunion. I was the one to insist he drive us there. It was I who leaned in too close in conversation, pretending not to hear him over the music. I was the one who placed my hand on his lap when he said something far from humorous. But it was he who said, “It’s late and I think that you know, I think we should go…we have a long drive home.”
I have waited many years for this moment, for the chance to be alone with him once more. Countless nights I lay awake dreaming up what I would do, what I would say, if ever we stood in the same room. If ever Fate would grant me the opportunity alone with him to extinguish or relight a flame long lost to the cruel silence of a heart untrained in the art of saying goodbye.
Time has placed a breach between us. I can feel it between us now, like an invisible chasm we might fall into if either of us dared take a single step forward. Like a pit covered in foliage set to trap and capture the prey with a morsel to lure it in.
Can we rekindle the flame that once burned? Dare we set it alight anew? The torch remained with me all these years. Through storm-cloud filled skies and endless periods of desolation, violent months of emotional turmoil and too many tear-stained pillows to remember…I held on, protecting it from the slightest breeze, sheltering it from negligence in the only place I knew. I kept it lit within my heart. Day after day, week after week, month after month until I was counting year after year and the flame only grew smaller and smaller.
He left…. No. He disappeared out of my life without a word, and despite my attempts over the years to reach him, until tonight we had not spoken of our disintegration. Hope remained my only cohort through the years that passed, an accomplice if you will. Hope surpassed my shame, Hope surpassed my sanity. Tonight I place all of my hopes and dreams in this moment. Tonight I cash in all of my years of waiting. What is it’s value, I wonder. How much is he willing to pay for it, or better yet, what should I make it’s asking price?
He took hold of my trembling hands and pulled me towards him in the dim light of the moon. I took a step forward. No chasm. No trap. I didn’t fall spiraling down an endless pit, clawing the narrow walls around me, wailing an S.O.S. No, that is what I had been doing during all those years of waiting: wailing an S.O.S. in all of my attempts to reunite.
He held me in his arms, as I looked up searching for the expression on his face, searching for the emotions he was feeling. Without resistance, I willingly let him ease me onto the bed. I tried desperately to find his eyes, but the faint light from the moon wasn’t suffice, or kindhearted enough to aid me in this plea. I longed to know the sincerity of his actions, the authenticity of his clammy palms. I wanted to read from his face the intentions of his heart. Laying on our sides, facing each other, without saying a word reminded me of his wordless departure almost sixty months ago and how wordlessly he let me know more than he could have said.
I used to drive miles just to see him. And when he failed to tell me that he had moved, somehow I tracked him down. Sometimes I would drive hours stuck in traffic just to see him a few minutes. I told myself that it was just a friendship that I sought to maintain, but always secretly hoped we would pick up where we had left off. Hoping to continue where the trail somehow vanished. Wishing that he would realize how much he missed me. I used to dream him back in my arms. I put the dreams to rest long ago, but tonight I find my arms are still outstretched.
Despite the shattered dreams and tired arms, somehow I just couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go. What a stupid fool, I was blinded by Hope. Ain’t that a joke? Blinded by Hope. The one thing that keeps our eyes from closing in despair was the very thing that kept me from seeing how much a fool I was making of myself.
You’d think I’d know better by now, but I’m driven by the moment. I’m riding on this wave of emotions betwixt us. Blind vision, blind faith, I’m blinded by Hope. Or is it by Love? Blinded by Love. Now that is a joke. A love I have harbored, nurtured, kept sacred and deep within me to be released back into the wild at the right moment and with the right man. No longer will I wonder to myself, where is the love I deserve? And where is the respect that I’ve earned? Tonight I am prepared to open my heart anew.
He rolled atop me suddenly, catching me off guard. The moonlight lit up half of his face, half of his grin and washed over his right eye revealing the baby blue I longed for. I must have seemed a cornered prey beneath him, startled, frightened of his next move. But I knew him far too well, despite the breach bestowed by Time. I knew very well that he would ardently take my face in his hands, place a kiss on each of my brows then go in for the kill; his blond lashed lids closing over his eyes….
Is this not what I wanted? Why was I resisting it inside. I realized as he pressed his lips fiercely on mine that something was off in the way that he kissed me. Too roughly, too desperately, too much unlike the him I once loved. Something about it all felt unnatural, felt forced, rehearsed, expected. Yes I wanted it, but now that I had it, our lips locked, his tongue searching to intertwine with mine, something just wasn’t right. Inside me, something didn’t feel right. Inside me, the torch did not light. I lay as if in a trance with him atop me and opened my eyes to find that he too had his eyes opened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked blenching. I watched him rest his head on his right hand and lay on his side facing me. Now I could see his full face bathed in the light of the moon. The expression distorting his face was not difficult to decipher. His eyes raced to and fro in search of clues within my eyes. But now it was I who lay with my back to the moon and the tear that trailed down my face and onto the pillow fell unnoticed.
He reached out and traced my lower lip with his left thumb as I replied, “Everything.” Everything was wrong. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt natural except the tear shed in mourning of the love I now realized was long gone. The light on the torch kept covert in my heart flickered, wavered and went out with the cool breeze of my single word response.
Shame that it has taken this long, but I must be sure, there is no room to be wrong. I have held on to the memory of him far too long. I have been loving the memory of him all these years and day by day I have been creating the perfect love lost. A love than has been long gone.
Tonight we shared five beers revealing his cheers and his jeers, but it was the words that he said back at the bar that emblazed in my head, “…never mind…” telling me more than he intended to disclose. Telling me more than I wanted to hear, for fear that all would be clear.
I took his hand from my lips and pressed it against my chest trying to explain. “Do you feel that?” I asked him. My heart beat as if in slumber; no rapid thumping from within to signal adoration or excitation. A confused expression washed over his face letting me know that he failed to understand. Or better yet, didn’t care. I rose from the bed and began to tell him… I began an attempt to clarify my position, my tortured years of longing for this moment. And now that he was here, how everything had changed. How everything was wrong, felt wrong. But the expression of confusion was frozen on his face. His baby blues still to-ing and fro-ing. I extended my hand to help him off the bed. And as we walked out into the hallway I chanced one last effort to help him understand that our years of song and dance were finally over.
After five years of failed dissolution this was finally our official break up. I took both of his hands in mine and said, “In delirium I realize reality: WE can not anew be US.”
The ties that bound us together were not as secure as we feigned. The love that I harbored was not for him, but in grief for the words that he never said; a formal farewell, an angered good-bye, anything but silence that left me wondering, guessing, doubting, hoping. As I laid there beneath him drunk on dreams I thought I wanted to come true, I was sobered by the notion that our unfinished business was finally through. It may not be what I had envisioned, nor the spoon-fed fairy-tale ending my heart longed for all these years, but it was from the heart. His heart. My heart. It was a finality revealed by the moonlight, brought forth in a single tear. Fierce, though half hidden. Ardent, but not smitten. Wanted, but still forced. Lost in confusion, found in the course of a kiss.
At the bottom of the stairs I didn’t know what to do, how to say farewell, how to bid him adieu. But somehow I knew, deep down in my heart that I would never see him again. After all this time, after all these years, enslaving myself to his memory, I was ready to let go. I was ready to let Hope go. Even at the cost of reality. Five years of dreaming. Five years of waiting. Five years of hoping that someday he might return. All in exchange for this moment, this chance together again in the same room.
Emotional turmoil. Emotional slavery. Emotional emancipation; his gift to me in the form of a kiss. Perchance I really wanted to fall in love with him all over again and have him fall for me, but tonight I just couldn’t return his kiss. So it was I who said, “It’s late and I think that you know, I think you should go…you have a long drive home.”
Shame…it’s taken this long,
but you see I must be sure…no room to be wrong.
Tell me would it be sans pain and suffering
if you were my rivalry?
Well, it’s been long since you have been gone,
I hoped I’d feel the same
as I did formerly.
I prayed you’d feel the same as me,
but now I see
that time has placed a breach between US.
So now what am I to do?
My soul’s missing you.
My mind’s unstrung ’round thee.
My mind can take, I know,
but I fear the sanity of my lonely soul.
‘Cause it is wrong to endure so long;
My hope surpassed my shame,
surpassed my sanity.
In delirium I realize reality: WE can not anew be US.
I’m always told: go for the gold,
don’t settle for second best.
Second best is long gone,
Lord, where did I go wrong?
Tell me, Lord, where’s my gold?
On a pair of wings?!
In So Many Words 