Category: Uncategorized

If you could only hear it through my ears, it would make the world seem right. Like you hear with me last night. I guess I convinced myself for a while that nothing had changed. That you were here and cleaning and I wanted to help, and did to the extent that was permissible. I don’t know, G. It was only awkward that you had to leave and that I could not hold you in that bed for the night. No naughtiness, just a tight slumber embrace. Just to feel you close to me. Just close to me. There’s one thing I want to say, so I’ll be brave, you gave you what you wanted, I gave what I gave, I’m not sorry I met you, I AM sorry it’s over, I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say…. so there’s nothing to say.

I am up tonight and you don’t know why, and I am up and it does not matter and I wish that you were asleep or ready to be so, or waiting up in that room for me. You are so small, but this me, whose experience has been like wrestling a much larger creature. Rilke says the only way that we grow is by being beaten time, and time again, by a much larger opponent. Maybe that is God, or it is ourselves. I don’t know, G. I just know I miss you in my life on this night, like on so many others. You only knew me and your sister in this town for so long, and I know more, but it is almost like I only know you.
I hate that pillow now. Your hips and warmth are the only thing that can suffice at these late stages.
I don’t have to have you. I want to have you. I don’t have to love God, I just do. I don’t need you, baby. I want you. Did you hear that? I want you. I don’t know when you will receive this. I don’t know how you will feel about it.
Know that I have never been full of shit. Know that it always sounds. It, with a clapper- maybe you as the clapper, that has broken this bell, and you as the clapper that can provide the healing salve.
I kind of hope you never read this. But why will I not remove it?
You were/are everything that this boy could ever want.
I love you, G.

I write this from the bedroom, just seconds after I walked down the hallway to put myself away for the night. The ghost of you walked ahead of me tonight for the first time in months. I have gotten used to this existence alone. Only occasionally do you creep back in. Not that I don’t miss you. Oh, I do constantly. It’s just that there are fewer times now where the there is a physicality like there is tonight. Maybe it is because there is no you at the other end of the street tonight. Even though I know it isn’t true, I have always felt that if I got far enough down, I could call and you would hold me for a night.
I feel like I play games now. That I try to approximate you really being in my life again. I hold a pillow. I hold my breath. I ask God to bring you back, even though I know I should not ask for these things from Him. I should ask Him for what’s best for me, for you, for us all.
The night before we broke up I asked you would you stay here again with me before I left this house of ours. You said you would. I realize why you haven’t been able to keep that vow. I understand things were all confused. I understand that you probably really wanted to, at least on a level.
This is not our bed anymore. It is just mine. I like it that way on some level. I still do dream of waking with you beside me on a Saturday though – you sleeping late. I dream of a trip to the bookstore before you awake. Maybe a long walk before as well. Cold cuts and toasted sandwiches from a much-thought-over-before-purchased toaster oven. You like turkey, I know, with a little bit of lettuce, vinegar and spices. How does breakfast in bed sound? And a foot rub before that morning? And after? And every night, just to keep us regular? And a return to a good love? Maybe one that could last this time?

Tonight you write asking, “Scrabble?,” and I do not know what it is. Are you wanting to play? I hope that is what it was. I wish I had been there to say yes, please come over. Let’s sit by this fire here that I now have lit, smoke cigarettes, play that game – kiss perhaps, sleep in that room together again. Oh, how warm you always were; a siren calling me to bed before my rhythm would bring me there. It is all loneliness here on this day that began with morning storms. Apparently we didn’t perish. We are still here.
I did see you and your mother drive pst the house today. And then, I saw you drive back past. The honk of a horn. The wishing that you would stop. That I could see you. That I could see your mother. That she would give me a hug. That I could spend time with you now before you go away for a week.
I have become accustomed, once again, to seeing you regularly, and although the rules of engagement have changed now, I still will miss you. It is odd that I went so long without seeing you and learned to live in that way, but now I cannot believe that I was able to do that. I know I can do it again if I have to, but it is so much nicer that you are back in my life. You are all I ever wanted. That’s the truth.
Last night, folding clothes in that room over there, was like a dream. After you left here, I washed clothes and cried. I folded them and remembered standing by the bed with you folding, and perhaps me helping to fold the clothes. I guess I realize now that we were just playing ‘house.’ I guess that we were pretending we were married, and we never should have done that. Maybe if we hadn’t pretended to be, we could be now. Maybe we could have been happy together. I realize that this is all silly speculation, but I like to believe that it could have been.
I have written of giving up on the talismans that I surrounded myself with after we fell apart. Occasionally I still like getting parking space 291, because that was where I was parked the first time we really talked after the breakup. Occasionally I still see if the elevator comes before the ten count. Occasionally I see if my combination of word games add up to my secret 5, because that means everything will be okay – you will love me again. Most of this is just habit now. I realize the false-godness of it all.
I still have kept one talisman though. After you left, I started collecting those quarters that I showed you last night. I should not have showed you them. I convinced myself that you would come back when I had 10 of them collected, all SC quarters. You finally made me love your state.
At first the quarters came quickly, and by the time Christmas rolled around, I had 6 already and it seemed that your return was imminent. Then the collecting slowed. When Tom and I would go play pool at the Highlander, I would change a five and look at each of the quarters individually. Week after week nothing turned up.
Last week, after we had been seeing each other again – hugging, laughing, crying – kissing on the cheek after an awkward approach to the face. I think we both think of kissing for real on those approaches; it only seems natural, but also foreign now.
I don’t know what to do with the coins now, so I guess I will leave them on the dresser. I think I will leave them there for awhile. Maybe soon I will have to leave this house. If I do I will hide the coins well somewhere where they will not me found – maybe in the closet that housed the monster that could attack you as you slept had you not checked it nightly while you were here. I will give the money to the monster. I will pay it for not attacking you, or us, but instead letting our own monsters eat is up. Now that we are exorcising those monsters, maybe our hearts will heal, and find a way to bring us together again.

When a person has no other persons he invents them because he was not designed to be alone, because it isn’t good to be alone.
-Donald Miller
And so I wonder at times if I have invented you. If all of this was some sort of dream, a figment of my imagination. Like in the end, this will all have been an illusion of the “Fight Club” or Shyamalan sort. The large portrait of you applying mascara could be just an empty frame. My memory of you applying that mascara, and of me taking the photo, just something that I created so that I wouldn’t feel so alone.
Are the ghosts that I feel of you in this house truly just ghosts? Was it just a ghost all along? Did I really take those walks with you recently? Those dinners?
I do feel so alone at times. I do anything I can to avoid it, but sometimes you have to face it. Was it all a dream? You sleeping beside me, was that just a pillow like I realize it is now.
Donald had his Emily Dickinson, a live-in creation wrought from words on a page. Maybe you are just my Emily, wrought from a dream of my utmost desires. A “Weird Science” type creation. Are you there? Here? Were you ever?
Say yes, and wake me from this insanity.

When I awoke and went out to my car this morning there was frost covering it. It is the first frost I have seen this year, but it very well may be the last. After a weekend, it is somewhat of a delight to get up on Monday morning, usually cranky, and see the world bathed in that refracted light. I came on in to work with angular sun all around, and down the street and under the buildings and tunnels to where I park. The light got blotted out. Everything was artificial. I thought of Mexico again. I haven’t thought about it in a while. My thought was selfish, it was, once again, of you not being in this town. I haven’t really felt a whole lot of sorrow in the last few days, but I did in that moment. This is not something that I haven’t already told you. I don’t want to feel like I am writing the same words over and over. I came out the other end of the tunnel and into the light. I dried my eyes of their light moisture, decided to smile, and started Monday.

Last night seems like a dream to me now, especially as I have spent the majority of the day alone here – not bad, but just alone. You in that motley dress seems like something that cannot be anymore, not here, or for me. Those boot should only be something that stomps over my heart. You across the table from me, even at that oppressive restaurant, was like I was on a date with Audrey Hepburn.
The weird thing about all of this, G, is that I have been through enough therapy now to strip me bare; to strip my thoughts about me and you bare. I realize now that there was a dependence, at least on my part – an addiction to you that probably was unfair to both of us. I have been led down a path that allows me to view these facts a little more objectively now. I have been stripped bare.
The fact is, though, at the end of every day, I still am so in love with you. I talked to Steve about this recently and he finally acquiesced. I feel that I may have finally taught my therapist something after all of the lessons he has given me. After all the bad, and anger, and frustration, and humiliation, and depression that I have felt after our breakup, I still love you, want you, and think that you are what I have always searched for. This has been liberating for me. To know that I was not living a lie, is incredibly freeing.
I am glad that you are finding God again on your own terms, and in a way that makes sense to you. I have managed to do that too. It, too, is incredibly liberating.
You spoke last night of seeing beauty in things again. I do that too, and it makes things seem so worth living for now. Today I saw a tandem, child-mother, bike rolling through the Highlands and it brought tears to my eyes, out of the blue, completely unexpected.
The world energizes me now in the way that you once did. Not that you have lost the capability of doing that. Last night, hugging you on the side of McLendon – on your end – made me tingle with life and contentment as well. My life tends to fill me up these days: the things I see, feel, experience…
I still hope for us though. I feel like I found what I was looking for once, and I do not feel I was mistaken. It may not ever be able to be again. I understand that. I am willing to leave it up to God and time as well. I do think that you still hang around for a reason though. You do not think of me in Hell for a reason. I think this still hurts us both for a reason as well. I think we realize that there was, and possibly still is, potential there. I don’t know that you have ever experienced anything like you felt with me, and I know I have never felt anything like I felt, and feel, for you.
I see a beauty in you now, with your new mindset and quest, that I never experienced before – not that you needed any more beauty. You are still the most incredible and infectious person I have ever been around, even after the dependancy has been stripped away.
I hope you have slept well. I hope you always do. I hope occasionally, though, that you miss me holding you tight. I miss the request, just as much as my arms miss you.

You give me wings (not Red Bull)

I may ruin it, but I received your text message tonight, and felt like jumping for joy. I was at the Winchester playing darts for the first time in three weeks when I pulled out my phone and you were there. How many times have I asked you to have dinner with me? How many times did you say that you did not think it was the right timing? I hope me writing this doesn’t make you think that the timing is still not right. I don’t know what else to say but, yes, yes, yes. I know it will be an attempt at being friends ultimately, but I remember the last time that we had dinner was when my parents were in town in September. I miss eating with you, G. I guess that is not all I miss, and I am sure you still miss things too, but dinner was 90% of the time so nice.
I still drive by Trinity Place on my way back from Steve’s office every Tuesday now. I think of the irony as I run on the opposite direction from the way I came in 2003: rolling down Ponce and over to find you, such beautiful thing, waiting for me – unwittingly or not. I think of drinks at Carpe Diem, and dinner with my mom there.
I do not know where to take you tomorrow night. There’s a side of me that wants to go to Tijuana Garage, but that place has has vanished since we parted. There’s a side that wants to go to Manuel’s, but I know you never liked that place, or at least you didn’t like the food there. If I could afford it, I would take you to Seeger’s, but I don’t think either of us, with our peasant palates, would really enjoy it.
Let me know if you have ideas. I will think of it also. Maybe BBQ? Maybe I could convince you to a movie? Maybe I will be able to show you the joy I have in my heart these days, and the love that is still there for you. Maybe.
I will hold it together, despite the fact that you still can strip me bare.

Last night I saw that you were back in town and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was like order had been restored on McLendon. I don’t feel like my end of the street is waving around in the air so much any more. I am glad you got away. I am glad you are safe. I am glad you are back.

I caught myself, this morning while having a banana for breakfast, standing in front of the photo I took of you at Ashley’s wedding. At rapt attention, and a bit of zoning out, I stared at that photo. You are so beautiful, G – radiant, shimmery, a real presence. I guess that’s what I wanted you to know.
The most beautiful woman in the world to me.