There was a moment when the wind took a beat—it rested along the rooftops and inside high branches. And all of the noise that had been swirling around our bodies and through our hair, stopped. In an instant, when all I could feel was fear, he found my eyes, untangled my folded legs, and pulled me slowly across the pavement, into his.
And in that beat, I realized how quiet his love was. I had heard it for the first time and that was enough.
There was a lot to wake up to. A lot of feeling and mess and pain and pleasure and love and loss. The room felt scared, as if it were alive and had reason to fear what the morning was holding. Or maybe it was the dryness of the place where she slept—the cold electricity of a space without water, and a charged sense of worry, hovering like low clouds in the sky, for the moment her fingers might be pricked with a shock.
Still naked and chilled from the night, she rose slowly, in search of the glass of water by his bed. Her lips had dried up in the night and were rough against her tongue. It felt as if she hadn’t had anything to drink for days. She propped herself up with one arm and twisted her body to the edge of the bedside table. The glass was almost empty and pieces of dust had fallen across the surface of the water. It was enough to wet her mouth and throat, but left her with the taste of old.
The room was quiet and gray. Light cut across the floor in lines of white, and shifted as the sun rose and spread. The bouquets that she had picked still lay across the shelves, though they were now dry and faded. She had one for every place they had been. The park outside his house … the open field near hers. Their first trip together—a four-hour drive to the ocean. They had gone in the winter, when the beach was empty and still. The entire shoreline belonged to them, shared only with the moon and the tides. It was a beautiful time. Hands in the sand, digging deep, to build a home for the fire. A first kiss in the dark, against the heat of a yellow flame. A night in a tent, skin-to-skin, and a morning that crept in with the call of birds on the water.
He had left silently before she woke up. In a rush to get to work … in a rush to get away. She thought she might have remembered a kiss on the cheek, but knew it didn’t really matter. This was no longer the beginning of something new. It was the slow pull toward the end of something all dried up.
She drove home in the blue light of the morning. There was a fresh rain against the surface of the streets and flocks of bathing birds calling from the trees. Streams of water rushed along slated curbsides and filled the creeks and ponds. The colors of the neighborhood were rich and bright, like the skin of a lady in love. Everything outside of his small room was alive and quenched and as she drove the rest of the way home, she couldn’t help but think that, maybe, if they had left the window open through the night, some of the rain could have come inside.
It’s not faith,
if we’re just desperate to believe.
And it can’t be love,
if the catalyst is need.
And where am I supposed to be
when nothing is around me…
when nothing seems to breed.
And what about the promise…
the peace that comes from knowledge
or the power of some entity?
I’ve only ever seen it leave
with the heat.
And after all this time
my greatest deficiency
is sleep.
I contemplated leaving the beach for the day to do some sight-seeing on my own. Our time together was floundering and any hope that we previously had of salvaging the relationship, departed into the sea upon arrival.
It was clear to both of us … it had been clear, for a while. We were much too young when we found each other and, by the time we grew up, we were much too angry to forgive each other. We had been reduced to strangers or, at the very most, acquaintances who occasionally slept close to each other after a night of drinks. It was a very lonely love. But, it was a hard one to let go of.
The curtains were still closed when I awoke, but the room smelled of cheap coffee, and I could hear the tiny knocking of cleaning ladies, up and down the hall. I wanted to go back to bed. The room was so dark and still sleepy. Layers of thick fabric hung from the windows, blocking any shreds or strands of unwanted light. There was a whole day to be had outside my window, but I was afraid of what it would be like.
I hadn’t seen him all morning. I waded around the room for an hour after I woke up, thinking he had just gone for a walk around the hotel. It wasn’t until I became stewy and decided to go on without him, that I saw the note he had left:
“Taking the day to myself.”
He kept it short. It was his way of letting me know that he was still sore from my comment the night before. I had, admittedly, made a bad joke during dinner. The hotel made a mistake when booking our room, and we ended up with two twin beds, rather than one king. We had been laughing at the whole ordeal during dessert until I mentioned (I’m almost certain as a joke) that the staff was making more realistic decisions for our relationship than we were. He didn’t think it was funny.
The rest of the evening was spent in silence. He wouldn’t hear anything I had to say and offered no aid to my efforts to repair the situation. He signed the check in silence. We rode the elevator in silence. We walked the long hall back to our room, in silence. I went to where my night-clothes were and carried them into the bathroom with me. I didn’t want to get undressed in front of him while things were so tense, so I changed with the door closed. By the time I had taken out my earrings and removed the makeup from my face, he had already pushed the beds apart and claimed the one furthest from me. We fell asleep with our backs to each other. In silence.
The moon was out, but we couldn’t see it behind those heavy curtains.
After, literally, years of pursuing her and only ever getting “no” to his requests for a date, my dad climbed into the backseat of my mom’s car one day, and hid there until she got off of work. My mom finally finished for the day, walked out to her car, only to find this complete goofball in the back, and was told that he would not be getting out of the car until they “had a talk.”
After telling her to drive somewhere, they end up at a nearby lakeshore, where my dad proceeded to list off all of the reasons why my mother should let him take her out … “I’m great and I’m wonderful and I’m this and I’m that and you would be a fool not to date me” … you know, really sweet and humble things like that ;)
And, finally (for some mysterious reason), after who knows how many years of saying no, my mom finally said yes.
Good job, Dad. Way to persist! <3
Winter 2012
One day, on top of a high cliff, I learned many things about being afraid.
The water was quiet and the cove was green and still. The voices of others crawled across the lake to our side of the island, but, by the time they reached our ears, had lost their shout. We only heard whispers and echoes of their celebrations— the sounds of joy, hushed, but no less infectious. It was a beautiful time to be up so high.
We were still out of breath from our swim against the current and our climb against the rocks. He was much more experienced than I was and knew the way. I felt safe, despite the danger. I followed his arms, still wet with lake water, as he pushed aside overgrown brush and branches for me to pass through. The cliff was near and I hadn’t done this before. I felt brave and the task seemed small, but, when the forest cleared and we reached the edge of the rock, I quickly lost my nerve.
It hadn’t looked so high when I was below it. Perhaps it was the shakiness of the climb or the uncertainty of the depth of the water below, but, all of a sudden, my fears had caught fire. I walked my toes to the edge, where the cliff met the air, and looked down. Everything in me raced and shook, claiming much of the strength I needed to stand. He stood a few feet off, watching me watch the height, but unable to see or know how scared I was. Unable to see or know how badly I wanted to climb back down and slip back into the safe water that I knew so well.
I began to ask him questions about the jump— about clearing the tree branches that weren’t far below, about if he had ever hit the bottom of the lake or if he had ever hurt himself. He answered them with a smile and sat down against the trunk of a tree that had grown through the ground.
“Are you not going first?” I asked him, nervous that he would say no.
“You don’t need me to, but I will if you want me to.”
We traded places and I watched every detail of his departure. It was so quick. By the time I saw the splash, I could no longer remember how he had placed his feet or how far he had to jump or if he had scratched his back against the branches. I had a couple of minutes to muster up my courage, while he made the climb again, but, I wasn’t able to. He came back around to me and took his place against the tree. I still wasn’t ready. I was still too scared.
He continued to jump and climb, over and over, for almost an hour. Each time, he would tell me to watch something different, so that when it was my turn, I would know what to do. And so I watched and I learned and I memorized the act of safely jumping from a high cliff. But the fear would not leave me. I could feel my shoulders burning from the sun on my back and I knew that he was tired from all his effort. I wanted so badly to jump … to show him that I could … to show myself that I could … but, instead, with a deflated spirit, I announced that I just couldn’t.
I expected that he would comfort me and tell me not to be embarrassed and that we would climb down and swim back to the other side. I would tell him that I’ll come back alone and conquer the jump myself, on a day when I have plenty of time to waste. I would thank him for trying so hard to encourage me and make me feel safe and, that, he really did do a great job. I thought that we would go home and that I would feel relief … and disappointment.
But we didn’t climb down the rock. Instead, he leaned back, against the tree trunk, and told me that he would wait all day. He knew that I could do it and he wasn’t going to leave, until I knew it. And so I stood at the edge for another half hour, shaking and sinking and shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I imagined all of the worst things that could happen and, at times, truly believed that they would. I practiced the jump, over and over and over again, in my head, until I eventually got scared that over-thinking it would cause me to hurt myself. And so I just waited. I waited for the bravery to come. I waited for all the fear to drain out of me … for my hands and legs to stop shaking. I waited for my heart to stop racing and I waited for a moment when I felt like I could jump safely.
But, I waited and never felt brave and I waited and I never felt safe. And then I just jumped.
And I was no longer afraid.
I sat with a young mother in the afternoon. She was my young mother and I was her very young daughter. We played with sticks and flower-stems on the front porch steps and talked about the clouds and what they looked like. They were grey and heavy and it was going to rain soon. I saw one hanging over the highway. I told my mother that it looked like two hands clenched together … like hands that were scared. The blue in her eyes sharpened. She wouldn’t look away from me. Her eyes locked against my face, moving only in tiny flinches as she focused on the different features of its shape … the freckles across my nose … the pink in my cheekbones. There were tears in her eyes.
A man that was not my father, but had been spending many days and nights with my mother, was no longer. And the nice things that he had given her were now sitting in an old, cardboard box— the bouquet of flowers with deep purple petals, the necklace he had laid around her neck, and the letters he had written her, with very gentle hands. My mother said it was time to give them a grave. She explained that, sometimes, parts of people die… the good parts that you wanted to stay… and that the best thing to do is bury them, deep in the dirt.
Later in the night, long after my mother had fallen asleep, I slipped out of bed and into the hallway. The socks on my feet made my toes slip across the wooden floor. I moved slowly past the walls and was very careful not to make a sound. The porch lamp was still on outside and silver light leaked in through the window-blinds. The box still sat where my mother had left it, in an old chair that her father used to sleep in. The flaps were open and streams of light beamed against the white diamonds of her necklace. I looked down at my folded arms across my chest. Resting inside of them, was the weathered stuffed animal I had carried everywhere. He had been my greatest friend and held a very quiet love for me. But he was tired now, I told myself. And the blue of his skin was faded, now resembling the grey ashes of something burned. His color had been my favorite. But, like my mother had told me, sometimes the good parts of things die.
And so, with silver light across my face, I cried and said goodbye to one that I loved. I laid him in the bottom of the box, underneath the pages of my mother’s letters, so that he would not be cold. I left the box open and the porch light on— it would be dark in his grave, I knew, and I wanted him to have one last night in the light.
And then I left him. And I climbed back into my bed and slept alone for the first time. It was a very awful night.
We’ve grown into ugly things…
like fused roots,
confused,
and unsure of what to breed.
The water here is dirty,
but our mouths are dry
and thirsting.
We need new seeds
and a safe terrain.
The pressure of clean hands
against the grain.
The transfusion of veins.
A new landscape
and the courage to stay.
Let that old ground become a grave.
Let this new home be a place to pray.
We’ve got to rise to be resurrected.
Let the sun disinfect us.
Create new roots
and grow in a different direction.
Its time to leave the garden we were born into.
There was a morning, not very long ago, when she felt something that she couldn’t define. It was important and clanging, like the beat of cymbals across symphonic lines. Constant and reminding of the paths she had tried. And the trees were breaking in the garden. She imagined herself rising up over the white desk she sat behind, opposing winds battling, creating pockets of gravity … the ability to fly. Her hair tangled and whipped across her face, like the slapping of dry branches against the glass outside. There was movement in her mind— a kind of shuffling that seemed to indicate the uncertainty of time. But nothing spoke. No thoughts arose.
Just a feeling of trouble,
and the sting of needles from the broken pines.
The sea is certain.
