Rhetoric

Words. We incessantly nitpick them. We assess the tone, the timing, the inflection in efforts to understand each other, convinced that the substance of our intentions is disguised among the syllables. We adhere to a phrase we can't decipher, rolling it over our tongues again and again. The answers must be in there.

Maybe this why I am so haunted by all he did not say, perpetually grasping to fill in the gaps of all I still fail to understand about him, about the decline of a love that once seemed so tender: instead of a single garish flaw to dissect, there are a multitude to consider, discard, consider again, agonize over... The guesswork is exhausting.

Did I imagine it all?  Or interpret trifles as something more? Did I make the mistake of my life and build a passion out of a repartee?

I asked. I asked him as our words waned, as our touches withdrew. I asked him at the end, when the silence had become a canyon. He remained silent.

And somewhere in the silence, he lost me.

The fatigue of second-guessing myself finally conquered my ardent romanticism. The ever increasing silence only made sense when I retreated into the hollow of a shell, built a wall to keep out the sound of anything but my own footsteps.

Occasionally, a brick falls. And in the sharp stillness that follows I hear the old, familiar refrain: I love you, I love you, I love you. But it has been so long now, so long since he has said the words - and the voice begins to sound more like my own. Am I still talking?

Dressed Up and Dreaming

I never understood all the fuss about weddings. I never considered what we would wear or how we would decorate or even the flavor of cake. When I thought about weddings, I thought about him smiling at me, a smile that would easily eclipse any tuxedo. And kissing each other. And the thrill of knowing he loved me that much.

I guess I wasn't concerned with the wedding; I wanted what came after. I wanted him to be my roots, my home, the thing that steadied me. I wanted to be the best part of his day, to fill those little in-between moments with the stuff of love: a heart drawn on a post-it note, a kiss as we passed in the hallway, a glass of wine brought to him as he typed...

I would have married him wearing a t-shirt, with no ado whatsoever, and happily gone home to build this life I wanted for us so very much.

But we never built that life. He didn't want it. Or he didn't want me. (I don't know; I didn't ask.) And after the dream dissipated, I began to feel contempt toward the idea of marriage. It seemed such a flighty notion, to build a tangible temple upon nothing but love - love, such an erratic, fickle, whimsical thing. Such a nebulous foundation. It was bound to crumble.

A week ago, I saw this gown.

   

And it tugged at the girlish reveries of romance I thought I had finally left behind. It wasn't so much the gown as what it represented: a steadfast love, one with enough faith and courage to build a temple, build a life and walk into the future together. Loving each other that much. Proof that sometimes taking the leap and investing all that love and hope and intimacy is so completely worth it, that sometimes the temple will last.

I want to be all dressed up in love again. It may be layers of the lightest tulle, like this gown, or it may be the soft cotton of an old favorite t-shirt. The fabric won't matter as long as it fits, as long as the seams are sewn well enough to last, as long as we can build a temple upon it.

Perfectionist

If there is a loose string, I am compelled to pull it. I cannot leave it there, let it go, admire the beauty of the many other perfect knots. I will keep coming back to that one stray piece again and again, itching for a way to weave it into the pattern; I will examine, smooth, braid, tuck. I will turn over the fabric, then turn it back again, then repeat. And, inevitably, my fiddling will be the true reason for its unraveling. The end will fray or the length will weaken... And then it will come undone.

Like an old, worn sweater. Like the edges of a hand-me-down rug. Like a disregarded love.

Intangible

When she was still barely a girl, just on the verge of being a woman, she met a boy and quickly fell in love. She spent hours admiring the nape of his neck, his carefree laugh, his distinctive way of moving through a crowd to reach her - the unique traits that only lovers really know.

After a while, she began plucking out little pieces of her soul and gently presenting them to him. He hadn't asked her to; she wasn't sure why she started. She didn't even notice she was doing it until it had been going on for quite some time. She guessed she just loved him so much that it seemed natural to make an offering, to give herself over to the momentum of it all. Besides, they would be together forever, so she could retrieve the pieces any time she needed them. She might as well share.

He did not keep hold of the pieces very well. Some were dropped, others lost among his pockets, a few seemingly discarded. He had always been a little absentminded...

When his arms were full, she thought she might like a little piece of his in return, just a tiny one to keep in her pocket, turn over in her hand when she missed him. A token. She waited patiently, certain that he would press one into her palm... but he didn't. She waited, waited, waited longer. Finally she asked him for a piece, just a tiny one, to hold close to her during his nights away. But he shook his head.

He must be confused, she thought. He must not understand that their souls were already fitted together like a puzzle. And so she asked again. And still he shook his head.

She sighed. She pointed to all the pieces she had given him - brimming from his pockets, stashed in his drawers, messily piled in the corners of the room - and then, hesitantly, she held out her upturned palm.

He stood very still for the longest time, so still she could hear the tick of the clock. Then he shook his head. "These are my pieces. If I give them to you, what will I have?"

"I gave you mine... You will have mine," she said."And I will have yours."

"Why should we give away our pieces?" he asked.

She thought for a moment. She wasn't sure. It had just seemed natural. "I guess... I guess to... to be part of each other," she fumbled.

He smiled. It was the smile a teacher gives a student who speaks too quickly, who has already learned the answer to the question but fails to realize it.

"Give me your hand," he said. She placed her hand in his and he pulled it to his chest, ran it along the outline of his rib. And she felt the most intricate patterns there, thin vines wound around and over and through. She caressed another rib, and another, and there, on each one, the same elaborate design. How had she never noticed them before?

"See?" he said. "We already are part of each other. We made our marks long ago." He gestured to the patterns. "You have always been part of me."

Shapes

Love.

Like thin, bony fingers
clenched around my chest,
like exhaling the
                         very     
                                last
                                      drop     of air.

Like the heat of the sun on my cheek,
bare toes scrunching in the grass...
like the weightlessness of a Saturday.

Like laughter,
tumbling out so carefree,
filling the world with
the songs of my heart
                                  la la la la...

Like the last glance back
at the dullest pair of eyes,
like looking in a mirror
while the reflection
fades away.

Like my head on the curve
of his shoulder,
the familiar arc of a form
I know as well as my own.

Like an abyss of darkness,
hands outstretched before me,
seeking the path already
etched upon my palms.

Seedlings

Once there was a boy who left a girl. On a sunny afternoon, he packed his things, kissed her forehead one last time and firmly handed her a tiny flashlight. "Use this," he said. And then he walked down the front path, away, to a new home. Without her.

The girl stood in the doorway for a long time, gazing down the empty path until blackness finally settled over the yard. After some time, she shut the door and, clutching the flashlight to her chest, retreated into the silent house. She wandered from room to room, eying empty spaces on walls, opening a vacant drawer, leaning down to sniff an old burned-out candle. She turned the flashlight over in her hand, wondering what she could use it for. How odd. How inadequate. At long last, she curled into her favorite chair, flashlight against her chest, and fell asleep.

The next day, she woke early. She lie still for a long time, listening to the silence. Finally, she rose, determined to make some noise so she didn't hear it any longer. She opened one of the vacant drawers - his drawer - gently lay the flashlight inside, and shut the drawer. Then she washed dishes, she swept, she dusted - oh, but dusting was too quiet... She pulled her books off the shelves, her treasures, because her books had always taken away the silence. She reorganized them, refiled them on the shelves. She stood before them, pondering which to read. Surely a new selection - a dramatic tale of adventure, perhaps - would make that lingering silence dissipate. But she just couldn't choose.

She repeated this process for many days after, busying herself with chores through the morning and afternoon. In the evenings, she retrieved the flashlight from the drawer - his drawer - and held it while she slept. And so the time went by like this.

One day, some weeks later, she woke and decided she didn't want to do chores. She didn't want to stand before her bookshelves. She had grown tired of the routine. She fetched her favorite hat from the closet, opened the front door and inhaled the sweet morning air. Lovely. And then she decided what she really wanted was to take a walk.

And so she walked down the front path, into the park, into the meadows. She walked for hours, occasionally pausing to pick a flower, slip a smooth pebble into her pocket, watch a bird flit from branch to branch. She came across a tiny stream and sat for a long while, soaking her feet in the cold, bubbly water and running her fingers along the grass. When the sun began to set, she stood up, collected her flowers and pebbles, and walked home. Such a fine day it was.

She put the flowers in a bright orange vase and placed it on the table. She wanted to keep the pebbles in a safe place, so she opened a drawer to put them away - and realized it was his drawer, the one with the flashlight. She set the pebbles inside then picked up the flashlight. Why had he given her this? She already had plenty of lights and candles... What was she to do with it?

She clicked the flashlight on, shined it over the empty spaces on the walls, the bookshelves, the new flowers. Hmmm... She opened the closet and shined it inside. She opened another drawer and shined it inside, then another and another. She moved her wrist about, watched the light dance across the ceiling. She clicked the flashlight off. Okay, this was silly; of course he hadn't given her the flashlight to shine around the house...

And then - she knew. She thought about how when he looked at her his eyes felt like sunlight. And how he had such a knack for finding strange ways to fix broken things around the house. And how he had handed her the flashlight with such purpose. And she just knew. She clicked the flashlight on again, slowly turned it toward her and shined it into her chest. And there, among her pale thin ribs, were tiny bits of things breaking through the surface of the dirt: little scraps of colored cloth and silky feathers and streaks of paint, the faintest etchings of poems, the teeniest wildflowers. And if she stood very still, she could hear a soft, lilting music.

A tear fell but she did not wipe her eye. She held the flashlight, gazing at the beautiful wild things growing inside her. Had he known it was all still there, waiting for the right moment to begin to bloom again? 

She stood that way for some time and when she had listened to the music long enough, breathed in the scent of the flowers, colored her eyes with bright yellows and greens and blues, she clicked off the flashlight. How could she possibly have thought she was alone in the house with all these wild things tangled about her ribs? She opened the drawer, set the flashlight next to the smooth pebbles and carefully shut it.

In the following days, she added other keepsakes - a poem, a bracelet made of dandelions, a photograph of the stream. And always, at the end of the day, when the blackness had settled, she clicked the flashlight on for a moment and shined it toward her, then gently set it back inside the drawer. 


"he taught me to run high on my toes. I will always remember his words: run proud & remember you are alive." - Brian Andreas