cryptic appreciation

the word for your being
and the word for mine
separated by the sound we make
when we have something to prove

the small sentence
they all speak so lightly
overheard
undermined
and meaningless
most of the time

i missed it for a while
but lately i see it often
magnified with quantifiers
or the addition
of my name

it dives off the page
and into me

a settling of my panic
from across the pacific

hopelessly devoted, there i said it

and at the mention of seattle, i forget california. the realization hits me: i’d praise anywhere, as long as it held you. so who am i, really? where am i going and why? these questions would be so much easier to answer if i had a passion in life. but i don’t, not really. i like frivolous things, like reading books, writing this, flirting with men who are too old for me, entertaining my friends, philosophy and coffee, free art museums and my own sad painting skills, the prospect of having long hair and being ten pounds lighter, sugary cereal with vanilla soymilk, song lyrics and poetry, the dream of an eloquent apartment in a city near the sea, running for hours, swimming for minutes, chocolate, and you. oh my god, you. if i knew you were mine for life, i’d have nothing else in the world to worry about.

but at the mention of seattle, i know you’ll be gone soon. maybe not to oregon, or california, or south korea, but you’ll go away because i see something in you that i once had in me. call it unrest, call it dissatisfaction, call it not-quite-love, call it my impending heartbreak. i felt it with the others; they were wonderful and kind and devoted – but i needed more and i couldn’t stop looking around. leaving each one of them was an easy slip. i don’t want you to slip away from me, but more importantly, i don’t want you to want to slip away from me. i want to be everything you need.

but at the mention of seattle, and my quick praising of the city, i know that i can’t change for you and i know that even if i were to try, it wouldn’t be enough. it’s not me, it’s you. you have changed me irrevocably but i think you’re the same person you were when i met you, with your cynicism and your chain, a chain pulling you to a different life. from day one, i knew you wanted out of everything i was in. but i fell for you anyway, and it’s not my time to leave yet even though your day of departure is impending.

at the mention of seattle, i call my best friend, and i hear her sporadic plans for her departure day. it finally sinks in; i can rely on no one. i need a dream, a new dream, a dream with no room for people and no hope for love. a dream that only changes with my mind, a dream i can pursue independently. but a dream is something you desire, and everything i desire involves more than me and more than my mind. i am nothing without love and others. but, thank you seattle, i have learned that i need to change.

at the mention of a suicide in the middle of the ocean, i am even more desperate to change. i may soon be living alone, but i will never die a lonely death. i will learn to turn sadness into enlightenment and pain into strength.

at the mention of seattle, i remember we have three months. at least three months. can we fit it all in three months? i hope it is impossible.

long distance relationship

why do we put ourselves through the madness of love? why do we tell ourselves we cannot live without a person, one single person, and let that single soul affect everything about us, every bone, beyond the bone. why is the timing always awful, and why does it seem like we’re more often separate than together? maybe we do that on purpose, fall in love with just the wrong person, just the person who won’t quite be there, because it’s safe. the separation is safe, can’t get too close. maybe we do it for the sadness, because the sadness is real and the sadness reassures us that, yes, we are in love, and, yes, we are capable of loving. instead of actually feeling the closeness, we just feel the sadness when apart and the desperation when together – add a touch of dreaming about a blurry joined future to the two agonies, and we’ve got love. “love.”

(august 2009)

emotional infidelity

i’m not sure why i like you, because a lot of people don’t, at least not as much as i do, which is enough to drive an hour to spend an evening in your presence, driving around, aimlessly talking, too much walking. enough to lay my head on your shoulder and realize that you lay your head on mine just when the tv screamed something about watching the love of your life with another person, not that i look for signs, and not that you believe in them, and not that you’d ever do something so painfully indiscreet. enough for all of this to feel right, perfectly placed on my trajectory, no second thoughts, no uncertainty, just all of a sudden, this is how it is, this is how we are, this is who we are. still talking about it, still analyzing in brief sentences, pause for a couple hours, analyzing in a meaningful stare, another hour break, and analyzing along with giving something new to analyze in a goodbye hug – all because i left some of myself there, on the inside of your forearm i brushed, on the cold indoor winter air i exhaled, in your mind, i’d hope. i like you. i mean what i say, and so much more.

the sound of settling

i was restless at lunch so he suggested we move. we wandered upstairs but the big chairs by the window were taken so we continued down the hall where no one goes unless it’s a friday night and some function is happening. i wanted to go through the exit doors and i swore the fire alarm wouldn’t go off, but before we got there you nodded toward the esch studio and we opened the doors to huge windows and a bright sky and a green and blue view of all those trees and the river. we take this view for granted and cover its majesty with complaints about how boring this town can be. the room was empty except for four chairs facing away from each other. you sat in one and i forced myself down next to you. i’m restless though, and you know this, so not a minute later i wandered around and gazed out at the spring that was unfolding before our eyes. i laughed and took my shoes off and slid around the smooth wooden floor. i asked you to dance with me and you joked about how you would not let me turn our relationship into an indie movie. most of me appreciates the way you keep me grounded but some of me just wanted to dance. i wanted to dance so badly, in retrospect. you should have danced with me. but i danced alone and twirled and jumped and talked about ice skating. i wheeled your chair around and you protested but smiled a little bit. i’m not really sure if my cheesy urges make you smile or if you smile despite them.

i can only hope that one day you love me because of my strangeness. for now it is enough that you love me despite it.

it is enough that i danced despite whatever you were going to think.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this may have been the saddest thing i have ever written.

love: a concept

It’s easy to not believe in love when you have just fallen out of it and into something that replaces it but, you firmly believe, will never truly equal it.  Especially when you’re ok with losing that love.  You feel no true remorse, you’ve cried once or twice, but you’re already throwing yourself headfirst into whatever this new thing is.  It’s exciting, a bit of an obsession, and gives you butterflies in your stomach, but you don’t feel that grounded, happy devotion that you did when you were in love.  You start doubting all that heart business.  Once a feeling fades, it’s hard to believe it was ever there, and even if you can accept that it did exist at one time, it’s hard to believe it was ever made of a strength you don’t currently possess.  We’re supposed to be getting stronger, wiser, and more real as we grow up, so it’s impossible that we could have felt more happiness in the past than in the present.  That would imply regression, and regression would imply failure.  And we can’t stand failure.  So we look back on the people we spoke those three little words to and we shake our heads at our naiveté and delusion.  As the cycle repeats itself, we become ashamed of how easily we fall into the romance novel / love song / titanic-esque fantasies and even more ashamed of how easily we fall out of one and into another.  The strongest institutions of all time define love as something true, lasting, and strong; we have been hearing of love’s vitality from our churches, parents, and Disney movies since we were born.  But this doesn’t mean that they are right, and we begin to lose belief in them.  We lose belief in love. I was losing belief, and it felt freeing.  I lost my ties to god a few years back, and losing belief in love just separated me even more from these elusive, demanding creations of society.  But society essentially has nothing to do with it.  Love is a feeling, and I’ve felt it.  It may not be present in my current life, but it was quite constant a few months back, and a few years before that.  I’ve felt it; I’ve had it.  The details may escape me as time goes on, but I refuse to undermine what once meant everything to me.  I will not look back on my past and shake my head at my silliness.  I was not silly – or naïve or young or delusional; I was alive.  And I still am.  I will fall in love again.