Reduced

Africa comes around me like the ghost of an old lover. It won’t leave me alone. Won’t let me work. Won’t let me eat. But I am unrecognizable to it now – a pallid spirit against a desolate backdrop. Charred into white ash. A No Man’s Land, an Unforgivable Place. The malnourished child of boredom and death, with genes that only doom it more.

What am I supposed to do here? Stuck by immobility and unpreparedness

Post-Africa Realizations

He’s one of many – those people so inclined to forward moving that they forget where they came from. Forget what they are. Technicality replaces complexity; internet replaces conversation; computer screens replace mirrors; emails replace letters; information replaces exploration. Everything in the world at the fingertips of anyone in a single room.

I had forgotten about it. Partially because I too have inevitably succumbed to the World Wide Web, my cell phone and my iPod. But while away I had forgotten why I couldn’t forgive America for being what it is: the Magic Land of Everything. Wal-Marts and Starbuckses; televisions and computers in every home, cell phones in every hand. Survival without these things is just a little bit of an unwanted hassle. I craved them for the four months I didn’t have them. But there was that part of me that noticed the quiet in my head and the flurry in my heart. Something long since dormant had awakened in me as if American excess had put it to sleep – the survival instinct of my soul surrogated by a placebo. My hand held a pen rather than my phone. My eyes watched the world instead of my TV or computer screen. There wasn’t access to the latter like there’s access to it here. We were forced to go without, and to my surprise, I found that other, more necessary, more vital, better things filled the void. And I did – I had that simple, joyful feeling of complacency. A constant feeling of pieces in their place. Unbeknownst by me, the reason was because I had human company – whether it was myself or someone else. There is just nothing like it. No one, nothing more important.

As they all sat round the table, the Whole Wide World in their hands, they mistook my scowl for envy while I watched them. It wasn’t envy; it was contempt. It was homesickness for the place that isn’t even my home. It was my heart breaking, watching them, realizing I didn’t fit at that table, my Whole Wide World in my hands. Realizing that I wouldn’t ever be like them again – if ever I had been. It was understanding the estrangement I would have to deal with in all my relationships with the people here. I didn’t feel like I had changed while away in Africa. I didn’t even feel it when I stepped off the plane into my home country. I rejoiced at the sound of American accents – at the very sight of fat people! At face value, it was familiarity. The thing I’d wanted.

I realized, suddenly, what happened to me as soon as I saw them standing there. All of them. Smiling. Jumping up and down. Giddy. Welcome-Home signs in their hands. I’m still recovering from the shocking disappointment. Who could I blame but that temptress, Africa with her dirty smooth skin, bright colors and raw human stench? It wasn’t anyone’s fault – not theirs, not mine. Disappointment was inevitable, just unexpected. It was no individual that I was disappointed with. I loved all those smiling, giddy faces. I loved them most in that moment – trading hugs with each of them. We were Back Together Again. But in that very second that I saw them in Tulsa’s airport, I made a firm vow that our reunion would not be a Happily Ever After affair.

They didn’t ask for my stories as they all wrote they wanted to hear. They didn’t ask to go through the pictures so I could point out who was who and what was what. No one wanted to know much beyond “How was it?” So I didn’t tell anyone anything more than “It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” That was enough for each who asked; they asked nothing more than that.

God, I missed – instantly – café conversations with strong coffee in the morning. Long and enduring conversations that seemed to want no end – from either side. Riaan who loved to hear and loved to listen. He wanted to know what I thought – about everything, about anything. He asked. And he looked into my eyes with the eagerness of a schoolboy dying to learn.

Here, conversations are pallid. They gnaw at the edges of any meaty substance but never take a full, hearty bite. No one cares. Or no one dares. These are the dreary results of a society with the Whole Wide World in their hands or in their rooms. The answers? They’re there in someone else’s words, discovered by someone else’s experience. This, they say, is globalization – the transnationalization of information. It’s the assumption that we’re all the same. The very same. My search button is now my airplane. My YouTube account is now my first-hand witness. And since it’s there whenever we want, nobody cares. Nobody dares.

Just another thing taken for granted. The world. And all the people in it.

Home, and this is what I've realized -

We were spoiled brats in Africa.

Instead of seeing poverty through a screen

in our plush living rooms,

we saw it from behind a glass wall.

Like onlookers at a zoo,

peering into the monkey cage.

Look at them,

look at them.

See how they walk,

see how they play.

How strange the way

they look like us –

some far removed ancestors

(or are they nearer than we’d like?)

Reach a hand out to touch –

the cool wall,

the freshly scratched

and scarred face of disparity –

The black and white picture;

the kind that reminds you it isn’t really real,

(Isn’t it? It isn’t.).

That far away,

that long ago,

to take us further away,

farther ahead

of

The Others.

That lowly brand in white supremacist history –

a history long and old and presently unraveling –

that story of black and bad,

and white and good –

the Archetypes that carry Culture on their backs,

refusing to let it walk on its own

capable feet.

It wasn’t that One

was better equipped than

The Other.

Simply differently.

Unlike the stories Archetypes tell,

the bad guy,

according to Reality –

the meaner man,

the crueler hand –

He always wins.

He always gets the say,

he forms the ways.

Declares math and money

our gods and our ancestors.

And like Religion,

he’ll always deny how he came to power –

"Through logical persuasion!

Enlightenment and progression!" –

turning a cheek to the meeker and milder –

the people made with blood –

with Life –

the same as others in the wild;

the kinfolk of dirt,

the ancestor of Love,

the mother of humanity.

Crippled with his greed,

he seeks to spread the disease

that left him deprived and depraved –

(the enslavement to Death,

in his mirror is his grave,

in his chest beats the clock) –

He’ll spread the hatred and call it honor;

teach violence and call it order.

He’ll give money to greedy hands like his

and call it charity to the needy.

He’ll destroy and call it progression;

kill community and call it capitalism;

start wars and call it religion.

The incurable, deplorable disease –

globalization’s airborne pandemic –

with Western origins and no vaccination.

Spread by way of rape:

Matron of peace and unity,

strong as the baobob tree,

left to the callous hands of

an ax’s maker and wielder,

A monster with sadist hunger.

7 Days To Go: Home.

I send all my problems to my mom. Because she is the wise Earth Mother archetype of my Life Story. She knows the answers, and she gives them without giving them. She nods her head or offers a knowing smile.

“You’re so young,” she confirms. And she reminds me that I have my whole life ahead of me. She agrees with everything I say, everything I discover about myself. Even the contradictory parts.

I love. I hate. She nods. She smiles.

She doesn’t dictate Shoulds and Musts. She doesn’t offer any strategies, nor any plans. She just looks at me, and in her wise eyes I can see my reflection. I can see myself better. Green, but better. Sometimes it makes no difference – it is just that I know she sees me, that I’m there, that I’m feeling, that she’s witnessing it all. And then sometimes, there are answers written in green on my face – I can see them through her.

Sometimes I think I’d like to be a mother. Just so that I can be for my daughter what my mother has been to me. Especially to a little girl who would otherwise be without. I want to be the one that gathers her into mother’s arms and loves her with mother’s love and holds her with mother’s affection. Through all the stages of her life, from her babyhood into her adulthood. As my mother has done for me. I want all my years' experiences to be for my daughter what my mother’s have been for me – the source of all her wisdoms and knowings, the fountain of her understanding.

~|~

Every day, I pack more into the open bag – the big duffle bag for all my winter clothes. One more pair of pants today. I planned my outfit for the plane. Leggings and a long T-shirt. An extra shirt for when America brings me into winter; I’ll be ready.

The story is changing its setting soon. It’s tumbling faster down the hill as hours pass. Home is rolling toward me, toward me, toward me. They’re getting ready for my arrival. They’re getting happy, too. There will be my boyfriend. My mama. My babies. My aunty. My Gigi, my Poopsie. My cousins. My best friend. All waiting for me at the gates to come walking through, to fill the place I left four months ago, again. To fill the Brooke-sized hole in America, the one just for me. The one my 2010 Census guarantees.

I can’t wait to see their faces – those tilted-toothed smiles and the happy cheeks. Who will get to me first? What will Reston’s face say? How will I hug them, hold them, love them all and all at once? I will jump into his arms and kiss the lips I’ve missed for months, and I’ll feel home again. I’ll feel right again. I’ll feel familiar. I’ll remember. I’ll know again how it feels to let him love me. To love him back. The richness.

Oh, I’ll be home again – in the warmth of winter, in the smell of cooking dinner in the oven. The sound of the kettle singing to its boiling pitch. The sticky feet on the clean white tile. TV commercials louder than necessary. The pu-shh of the opening front door. Tiny bell sounds on the hanging wreath. Pa’s snores during an afternoon nap and Gigi’s soaps and gasps. Quarreling children and a hushing mother. Loud teenage laughter. Brittle grass shivering in the cold.

My family, my family, the root of all love in my world.

The remembering is sweet. But living in my own life will be incomparably wonderful.

22 Days To Go: Jazz Lessons

This has been the most non-demanding time of my life. I have been on vacation for the past nearly four months. It’s time to teach myself a little lesson.

I need to stop.

I need to breathe.

I need to think about nothing.

I need to quit planning.

I need to just let it be.

I need to let go.

I need to empty all the contents out.

I need to close the door.

I need to live today’s day and tonight’s night.

I need to forget.

I need to forgive.

I need to love.

I need to live.

I need to just be.

I need to just go.

I need to just be free.

I need to not worry.

I need to be young.

I need to ignore time.

I need to let the days come to me as they come.

I need to listen.

I need to have patience.

I need to step away, step back.

I need to understand I’m not in control.

I need to stop trying to control everything.

I need to ignore practicality.

I need to dream more.

I need to create more.

I need to hum more often.

I need to smile more.

I need to laugh more.

I need to forget the seriousness of life.

I need to play more.

I need to give more.

I need to let myself go, be, do.

I need to rest.

I need to accept love.

I need to be kind.

I need to throw away fear.

I need to come home from the future.

I need to leave and learn from the past.

I need to start fresh, every day.

I need to live spontaneously.

I need to dance.

I need to kiss.

I need to hug.

I need to enjoy my life today.

These are not wants, these are needs. They are my needs, and I’m the only one that can provide them for myself. This list is a massage – to get all the knots and kinks out, the ones that have been sitting in my shoulders for too long. Too many years have passed while I was thinking about the next ones. Too many days have passed while I was thinking about their tomorrows.

Praying is hard for me. I get distracted by – gee, I wonder – too many thoughts in my head. I’m thinking about assignments I have due. I’m thinking about what’s going to happen to me in ten years. I’m thinking about when I should get my hair cut next. I’m thinking about what I can do to make myself focus on praying to God the next time.

I needed to pray today. I only pray when I’m desperate – when I have absolutely no idea what to do. That’s when I pray. I decided to take a shower, although it was completely unnecessary. I was perfectly clean. But nonetheless, I slid out of my clothes and made my way to the shower stall at the end of the hall. I turned the knobs to the right temperature and stood there letting the water pelt my skin.

I leaned my head against the tile wall and began. To pray.

When I need advice or consolation, God is a female. Sound and sure, gentle and kind. It’s comfortable. Like talking to my mom – but better. I don’t have to say anything out loud. I don’t even have to think anything. She just knows. She knows, and she loves.

I always start off like this:

God. I need you. I don’t know what you are or even if you do this kind of thing. But if you are listening and you are there and you are this kind of God, I need your help.

She’s slow to come at first. But when tears come, she comes running like a mama bear.

And I think I know she’s there.

She knows exactly what I’m talking about when I beg for her to tell me what to do. We jump right into conversation like she’s been in there, in the gallery of my mind studying the pieces, since my conception in April 1990.

She doesn’t say a word – there’s no holy voice coming from the heavens, or even from the shower head. She is quiet and patient. She is slow and soothing. She is listening. And loving. And that’s all. Tell me what to do. But she doesn’t. She tells me nothing. She just let’s me stand there, with my head against the tile, tears joining shower water on my face. Please, tell me what to do. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even reassure me with a pat on the back, not even a half hug.

Why did you tell me what to do all those other times? Why did you save it then? I don’t want to give everything and it all be for nothing in the end. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Silence meets me halfway. And so I join it. I turn the knobs. I grab my towel. I dry off. I go to my room. I shut the door. I get dressed. And then there’s a knock at my door.

Madison is early and unexpected. I let her in and busy myself with getting ready. I go eat an apple. I come fix my hair. We talk a little bit. And soon after, we make our way out.

The first clue.

Matt and Carmen join us and we walk to the café for jazz night.

It is here, that all the thoughts I have stashed away since the shower prayer come and lay themselves on the candlelit table. For me to look at. They get up, these thoughts, and dance in front of the stage to the soulful jazz. I watch them, mesmerized. Analyzing them as they spin. There’s me and him. There’s me and a dream. There’s the fights. There’s the kiss. There’s the way we fit. There’s love and fear, waltzing together. Fear and regret trade partners. I watch the way Present begs to be in the spotlight, but Future has already taken it. There’s everything I want in life, him included, holding out their hands to me – who’s will I take? They’re in my face, they’re in my ears.

Make the choice. Dum dum.

Make the choice. Dum dum, dum dum.

Make the choice. Make the choice. Dum dum, dum dum.

Or don’t. Just sit. Just listen to the music. Bah bah beedoo beedoo beedoo bum bah, yeahhhh.

And how fitting. Jazz. His favorite. Jazz is brilliant, he told me, because it’s completely made up as they go. You have to know music. You have to feel music. It’s unplanned, untamed. It’s free. It’s wild. It runs. It loves. It feels. It plays. It just goes. It just is. The music makes itself because the players trust the poetry – the blood that pumps through their veins. They trust it to just take them to better places. They trust it to just take them away – to just take them to where they’re meant to be. They put everything into it because their source is unlimited – they have everything to give every single time they pick up an instrument.

There is crazed and revolutionary beauty in the uncontrollable, unplanned, unrestricted beat of jazz music. There aren’t rules. There aren’t wrongs. There’s just freedom and passion and soul. There’s just music. And it works. It rhymes. It finds its way. It flows. It knows. It knows nothing. It goes for as long as it likes. It’s played note by note by note.

The second clue.

And so it must be with Life. Lived day by day by day. And trusting that it will make music on its own because you gave it everything and you infused passion into it and you loved it and you created it and you lived it like it was meant to be lived. It’s not calculation, it’s poetry. It’s not brain, it’s soul. It’s not confined, it’s free. It’s not controlled, it’s just created.

Because passion should never be planned.

22 Days To Go: Jazz Lessons

This has been the most non-demanding time of my life. I have been on vacation for the past nearly four months. It’s time to teach myself a little lesson.

I need to stop.

I need to breathe.

I need to think about nothing.

I need to quit planning.

I need to just let it be.

I need to let go.

I need to empty all the contents out.

I need to close the door.

I need to live today’s day and tonight’s night.

I need to forget.

I need to forgive.

I need to love.

I need to live.

I need to just be.

I need to just go.

I need to just be free.

I need to not worry.

I need to be young.

I need to ignore time.

I need to let the days come to me as they come.

I need to listen.

I need to have patience.

I need to step away, step back.

I need to understand I’m not in control.

I need to stop trying to control everything.

I need to ignore practicality.

I need to dream more.

I need to create more.

I need to hum more often.

I need to smile more.

I need to laugh more.

I need to forget the seriousness of life.

I need to play more.

I need to give more.

I need to let myself go, be, do.

I need to rest.

I need to accept love.

I need to be kind.

I need to throw away fear.

I need to come home from the future.

I need to leave and learn from the past.

I need to start fresh, every day.

I need to live spontaneously.

I need to dance.

I need to kiss.

I need to hug.

I need to enjoy my life today.

These are not wants, these are needs. They are my needs, and I’m the only one that can provide them for myself. This list is a massage – to get all the knots and kinks out, the ones that have been sitting in my shoulders for too long. Too many years have passed while I was thinking about the next ones. Too many days have passed while I was thinking about their tomorrows.

Praying is hard for me. I get distracted by – gee, I wonder – too many thoughts in my head. I’m thinking about assignments I have due. I’m thinking about what’s going to happen to me in ten years. I’m thinking about when I should get my hair cut next. I’m thinking about what I can do to make myself focus on praying to God the next time.

I needed to pray today. I only pray when I’m desperate – when I have absolutely no idea what to do. That’s when I pray. I decided to take a shower, although it was completely unnecessary. I was perfectly clean. But nonetheless, I slid out of my clothes and made my way to the shower stall at the end of the hall. I turned the knobs to the right temperature and stood there letting the water pelt my skin.

I leaned my head against the tile wall and began. To pray.

When I need advice or consolation, God is a female. Sound and sure, gentle and kind. It’s comfortable. Like talking to my mom – but better. I don’t have to say anything out loud. I don’t even have to think anything. She just knows. She knows, and she loves.

I always start off like this:

God. I need you. I don’t know what you are or even if you do this kind of thing. But if you are listening and you are there and you are this kind of God, I need your help.

She’s slow to come at first. But when tears come, she comes running like a mama bear.

And I think I know she’s there.

She knows exactly what I’m talking about when I beg for her to tell me what to do. We jump right into conversation like she’s been in there, in the gallery of my mind studying the pieces, since my conception in April 1990.

She doesn’t say a word – there’s no holy voice coming from the heavens, or even from the shower head. She is quiet and patient. She is slow and soothing. She is listening. And loving. And that’s all. Tell me what to do. But she doesn’t. She tells me nothing. She just let’s me stand there, with my head against the tile, tears joining shower water on my face. Please, tell me what to do. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even reassure me with a pat on the back, not even a half hug.

Why did you tell me what to do all those other times? Why did you save it then? I don’t want to give everything and it all be for nothing in the end. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Silence meets me halfway. And so I join it. I turn the knobs. I grab my towel. I dry off. I go to my room. I shut the door. I get dressed. And then there’s a knock at my door.

Madison is early and unexpected. I let her in and busy myself with getting ready. I go eat an apple. I come fix my hair. We talk a little bit. And soon after, we make our way out.

The first clue.

Matt and Carmen join us and we walk to the café for jazz night.

It is here, that all the thoughts I have stashed away since the shower prayer come and lay themselves on the candlelit table. For me to look at. They get up, these thoughts, and dance in front of the stage to the soulful jazz. I watch them, mesmerized. Analyzing them as they spin. There’s me and him. There’s me and a dream. There’s the fights. There’s the kiss. There’s the way we fit. There’s love and fear, waltzing together. Fear and regret trade partners. I watch the way Present begs to be in the spotlight, but Future has already taken it. There’s everything I want in life, him included, holding out their hands to me – who’s will I take? They’re in my face, they’re in my ears.

Make the choice. Dum dum.

Make the choice. Dum dum, dum dum.

Make the choice. Make the choice. Dum dum, dum dum.

Or don’t. Just sit. Just listen to the music. Bah bah beedoo beedoo beedoo bum bah, yeahhhh.

And how fitting. Jazz. His favorite. Jazz is brilliant, he told me, because it’s completely made up as they go. You have to know music. You have to feel music. It’s unplanned, untamed. It’s free. It’s wild. It runs. It loves. It feels. It plays. It just goes. It just is. The music makes itself because the players trust the poetry – the blood that pumps through their veins. They trust it to just take them to better places. They trust it to just take them away – to just take them to where they’re meant to be. They put everything into it because their source is unlimited – they have everything to give every single time they pick up an instrument.

There is crazed and revolutionary beauty in the uncontrollable, unplanned, unrestricted beat of jazz music. There aren’t rules. There aren’t wrongs. There’s just freedom and passion and soul. There’s just music. And it works. It rhymes. It finds its way. It flows. It knows. It knows nothing. It goes for as long as it likes. It’s played note by note by note.

The second clue.

And so it must be with Life. Lived day by day by day. And trusting that it will make music on its own because you gave it everything and you infused passion into it and you loved it and you created it and you lived it like it was meant to be lived. It’s not calculation, it’s poetry. It’s not brain, it’s soul. It’s not confined, it’s free. It’s not controlled, it’s just created.

Because passion should never be planned.

The answer.

31 Days To Go: Love Stories and The Ends

I did it. I severed the bind. Cut it with clean, sharp scissors. Had I been hoping for dull ones? Some that would make the cutting long and tedious? Instead, I was given a clean snip. Done. Over. Unintentionally, but for the better.

In a sweeping moment, it was all over. Hitting send was not a concern. I just did it. No twice thinking, no hesitation. I wondered, too, what I should do about Facebook. I left it as it was. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing.

Crying silently, I walked home with Madison and parted with her to go up and cry in my room.

Alone.

I had stepped a muddied boot into a clear puddle, and no longer could I see myself. No longer could I see what I really wanted. But I had knotted the end of a tattered cord. We now could either start another or leave it at that. An end was just a technical necessity. Even though it broke his heart and sent him spiraling into fear. Terror, I would say.

“I’ll die if I don’t get to talk to you.”

But I ignored him. He wouldn’t die. I’d come home in 33 days and find him alive – maybe just not well. He needs to suffer and think over what he has done. I needed to shock him awake with an icy bath in his bed this morning. I could no longer be left unheard. The dissatisfaction would have killed us both later if not soon enough.

Later, I got online to study for a test. He was there, frantic and afraid. Spewing words and sentences without thought. Some sweet, some embittered. I let him talk. I let him beg. But I was calm and firm in my responses. I didn’t ask, I told. I politely demanded. We worked out the technicalities. Are we broken up? N…n…n…yes. We are. I need that. I felt the earth shudder beneath him, a broken heart fallen like a heavy stone – in two heavy pieces. He asked – he begged – me to read one last letter. And then he’d leave me be for as long as I needed. I complied.

Rife with errors and other grievances. Desperate and grasping. I let him grope. I saved it in a file. And then I closed it, promising myself that it would be the last one I opened and the last one I closed. Because the next 30 days are mine to live without interruption, without consideration for anyone else’s needs but my own.

And if one day I need to take a year off, I’ll take that year. Because I can’t be my best for anyone else, if I’m not my best for me.

The silence feels good. This kind of love feels good – this free from guilt kind of love. This distanced love. This love that walks ten steps behind me. I don’t need to turn around to make sure it’s keeping pace. It’s just there. Lovely and there. Not nagging, not tired. Just giving me my space – just letting me walk alone down the road, across the streets without holding my hand. It isn’t forlorn. We walk on no guilt trips to anywhere. We’re just happy apart. Taking our time. And taking the day. Taking the night, too, to sleep in different beds – to love the cold and emptiness of a bed just for me. Without room for another, not even a dream.

What if I get used to this? What if I enjoy letting go of the sweaty palm, so that I can cup flowers and faces in both my hands? I love the free spirit that lifts my heel. That runs with me. That lets me go. To be watched from a distant point, knowing – knowing doubtlessly – that I’ll come back. Just let me walk the path before I bring you along, too. I don’t like the suggestion of fear, you at my hip, arm around me. I am fearless, to walk forward alone – to punctuate the darker places with my presence. To scream alone and let no one come save me. I like this – to stick my fingers into black holes and hope that they come out attached. I like the carelessness – making life an obligation to live freely, fairly, wonderfully for myself, for my life’s sake. I don’t need forewarnings about things I know the reality of already. I don’t need opinions, or even second opinions. I don’t need debates. I don’t need Security Council meetings. Because I’m well aware and better aware of the direful consequences of free and unhampered action. I know how dangerous words can be. I know how stupid bravery can be.

But there is nothing stupider than thwarting the passions of youth. If I kill them now, they’ll be dead forever. If I let them bloom, if I let them flourish, they may be with me from now until I die or they may wither slowly with age. But no matter what and no matter where they go later, I want them now. I need them now.

I’ve been wild since I came out, a screaming alien draped in a young and loving mother’s juices. The fatherless skinny baby with black hair and blue eyes – and only an entire family to call me perfect in all my ways. The five frog fingers on each hand; the ten monkey toes in total. They loved me wonderfully, they loved me holistically. They gave me manners and religion, but even those they never enforced. The only thing enforced was love – the purposeful reinforcement of all my innate things. They loved me for my laugh. For the way I hid behind doors when I got mad. They loved me for my (physical) inability to share. They loved me for my ungenerous affection. They loved me for my naughty attitude. They loved me like a freak loves a meaningless piece of contemporary art. There would be some that wouldn’t call it what its creator said it was. But they did – they saw the art in who I was from the beginning and who I morphed into until now.

They grew me proud. They grew me mine. They grew me to love me – no matter the shapes I took or the colors I painted myself. They grew me to know what I deserved – what men could never give but would always offer. They grew me to know me and to abide by the rules that my Self dictated to me. They grew me, and they never tamed me. They encouraged me to be and love the Wild raw thing inside.

It was easy to run away from the others. They gave more than I wanted even though I gave none. They made me feel queenly and regal, draping me in capes of gold and purple colors. It was nice to be adored. But I never needed it. And I never wanted it for long. Sitting on thrones and making rules – it wasn’t for me. Where I came from, there were no rules, only wind. And so I went – with it. Back to the uncivilized freedom of barefoot feet and stubborn hair to match a stubborn heart. I had a heart made of leather, and they a heart of glass. There was a carelessness in my attitude – dropping hearts without second thought, leaving before I could hear them shatter.

It was neat while it lasted. Fingers interlocked and silent nights. But it wasn’t enough to keep me from running away. Sit Down, Stay Awhile, never meant more than an hour or two. It was hardly long enough for me to take my coat off. And the one time I did, I left a few minutes later without it.

I refused love like I had an allergy to it.

No, no, no, really, I’m fine – don’t trouble yourself.

They set it on the table anyway (for just in case purposes?). I talked to them and let it sit there, untouched. I might have forked through it a bit to make it seem I had more interest than I did. I didn’t want to be rude.

Let me get you a drink with that, they’d say and go.

To come back to an empty chair and a fork in the heart they had left for me to love.

Even after I found a home, I still wished I could refuse the cannibalism again and again – just to hurt them, just to force them to eat themselves – to put their hearts back behind its cold boney bars. It was probably better in there anyway. The guest room in me was probably colder than the lonely cell within themselves.

And that was because I was using up all the heat in the main part of the house – my part, my heart. I needed it to beat with me while I ran. I needed the muscle strong and ever-ready to run, to just go. And go far away.

While I ran, I found him. Lying, casually, as if we had an appointment and he was early.

Had it been anyone else, and I would have kept running, slower perhaps – to ask wordlessly for a chase. But I stopped instantly in my pathless path. He smiled expectantly. And without preliminary conversation, we walked together.

He cleaned up my foul mouth. He combed gentle fingers through my tangled hair. He fell in love with my poetry and the muscles in my legs. We fell in love simultaneously. The only exception to past affairs. It was, with us, a halfway meeting. Romeo and Juliet – completely and utterly not meant to be together but wanting no one else and nothing more. It was dangerous loving, and little did I then know. He knew, and tiptoed cautiously by my side, hiding in my shadows or hiding me in his. We could only be seen together at night, with hushed voices, hands and lips for words.

He taught me manners through example. He held my hand against gentle, calloused palms with sweet fingers. He cut off my unrefined and reckless words with his lips. He was lovely and genuine, a calm soul with promises he would keep. He was the only one I ever let guide me because he did it so subtly. With tender finger prints he smoothed the nicks the Wild had given me. And he did it as though he just wanted to touch me. Only out of love, and some affection too.

I fell in love with his sweet soul and the way he loved me.

Enough to let him, for a long, long time.

It is inherent, though, this restless feeling. The irony in his name. Reston. Rest on. Stay Awhile. When really, I just want to run away – sometimes alone, sometimes with him. When really, I just want him to let me run away because he knows I’ll come back, and he knows that I’m never really gone. No matter how far away I go. I want him to let me go – into darkness, into depth, into frightening places – because I need to go there. I want him to let me learn, to let me be. I want him to love the wild in me, that untameable, unnameable, unmanageable Thing.

I just want to be boundless.

He put up fences, because he’s Afraid. That I won’t come back because I’ve been stolen by interest in something else or death.

What he forgot, is that there’s always been a gate. One that I have thus unlocked, and walked deliberately through. To the Other Side. The Wild Side. The side that loves to love me because I choose to be with it and love it in all My Ways.

It’s weirdly liberating not to want to talk to him. I have sequestered a most ardent desire to give him my time – all the time I can. And that, in itself, is a feat beyond laudability. I’m proud of me. Amen. It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to talk to him; it’s that I’m not allowed and therefore I just don’t have the want to. Because I can’t. So there’s no use wanting it.

His letter was sweet. I knew it would be. The second letter was not.

A flash of him, alone, comes to me. Melancholy from a throbbing heart, with no one to put ice in a bag. He’ll only let it swell until it becomes too big for the pericardium, and it either bursts or withers or becomes aggravated. If the latter, then I’ll meet him at the peak of his rage.

But I know that heart. It won’t ask to hurt me for what I’ve done to it. It will ask, kindly, with pleases and thank yous, for me to just love it and make it better. That’s all it ever wants. That’s all he ever wants. Just a little more love. He wants a motherly love, one that encourages and gives until its resources are depleted. I blame insecurity. And a lack of self-esteem. But mostly I blame an undying love for…Me.

You never would have known it – the coy way he smiled to the side, when we first met. The way his fingers touched my leg without my acknowledged invitation. He was sure – always. He took me to water tower tops in the rain. He came back. He hung a hammock between two trees at the park. He played a song for me in the church I wasn’t allowed in.

He always took me by surprise, the simple way in which he did impressive things.

Where did it go wrong? Was it me? Did I suck the confidence from him like an anemic leech? Did I make him feel he wasn’t good enough? How did we do that to each other? And why now?

I’ll be afraid to look into the eyes I stole from. The glint, I took it. I’ll be afraid to see what destruction I have wreaked. I’m already afraid. Will one month make his desolation tired and even more wary? Will he be at a point of no return? Finished off from 30 days of neglect.

That’s terrifying. To think of him that way. It’s like envisioning his corpse.

I must learn to subdue haste. I must learn to use my time wisely by not using it at all.

11:25 p.m.

I still have a long way to go with that.

Don’t forget that I love you, I said. At 11:11. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it, even though I almost did. But his face, sad and hollow from grieving, came into my mind. And Love Stories don’t have scripts. No they don’t, not really. It was my decision to make. There weren’t any rules someone told me to abide by. I made everything up. So I told him. Because that’s what I was feeling. And nothing in me told me not to say it.

He deserves to know. He deserves some hope.

Because he was never All Bad. He was just never All Good, either.

But who is All Good, and who wants that, anyway? Problems have grown us – they beg for love to show its face, to wield its sword and cut away the greedy, ugly things. He was never All Bad. I was never All Good. I’m selfish sometimes when I shouldn’t be. There have been times. But it wasn’t this time.

You know what I love? His face when he’s studying or reading something for fun. The slackened jaw and parted lips. Sometimes a pencil fitted in between them. And when he’s finished and we’re together, he’ll make me take a break. Come and sit on his lap so he can nibble at my neck.

No, I don’t feel bad for thinking about him when I’m taking time for myself. This isn’t about neglecting that my heart loves him. This isn’t about forgetting him for some set amount of days. This isn’t even about keeping promises with myself about not talking to him. This – these days I have taken out of our timeline are mine to do as I please with. I can wallow in my room over what I’ve done. I can recall fond memories. I can miss his kisses and his hands that dry my face even though they hate the feel of tears. I can sit and hope for new beginnings and final endings – of us and of the things that broke us. I can send him little messages of love if my still-loving heart feels like it.

I spent the day with me, and now, I come to night and think of him.

What will we say?

You look good; how are you?

Not the best I’ve ever been.

I’ll wonder if he automatically thinks I’m unattractive because I have a metal ring in my left nostril. I’ll be self-conscious of it, knowing how he despises it. I’ll wonder why I did it – out of spite or because I really did want it? Both, I’ll think. It was both. But I’ll regret it – even though, now, I know I shouldn’t.

How are you, he’ll ask.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what’s appropriate. We’re only friends, not lovers. We’re not nothing. We’re something. There’s potential in our skin, there’s want in our hearts. There’s conditionality wafting through the air like a bad smell – or do we like it? Like gasoline or nail polish remover. Do we have the right to make demands? Do we have the right to fight? Can we hold hands or hug? Can I lean in for a kiss?

I’m the one that left him, and yet I fear – so much – that he’ll reject me when I come back for him. Won’t he think I’ve been unfair? Won’t he feel betrayed?

Yes. And yes.

But love understands the selfish human needs of humans – even ones in love.

I do want to live with him. With him is the only place I’ll feel at home. I want to sleep in his bed at night and hang my pictures on his walls. I want the space to be his but the creation to be mine. I want to share a bathroom with him and watch him clip his beard, little skinny black worms on the white sink left for me to sweep into the drain. I want to shuffle around him in the mornings, moving from mirror to room, to closet to drawer, to mirror to sink, to kitchen to room. I want to establish routines with him, as well as routine interruptions. I want to find him where I left him. I want to know that every day I’ll be with him.

But I want to be good for him. And I want him to be good for me.

I just want him to be happy with me as I am. If he is that, then I’m happy with him as he wants to be and is.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

I’m feeling quite the opposite, he answered. Your actions don’t match up with your words.

I understood then, reading it at 3:15 a.m., that he didn’t understand.

That this was about him when it was supposed to be about me. He didn’t understand that it had always been about him – and about me just being a little bit better for him than I was before.

I woke up to a letter in my inbox. He was done. The day or two of waiting was too long, 30 might have killed him. He couldn't love what didn't love back. If I was going to be selfish, so was he. And that was that. Good-bye for now, he wrote.

It’s funny the way Love Stories never write themselves out. You can’t turn to the script – to see what line comes next, who exits, who enters, and from which side. We just improvise, go along as we can. And we made a great story – we made poetry sometimes, a real Shakespearean love affair. It was not a twist in the plot that either one of us had randomly injected. It was, perhaps, that all the times we had been tired of acting had accumulated to an amount that rendered us less than Broadway material. There were too many cuts and too many actions. Neither one of us could get the words right, the way we had in all other times. We couldn’t sweep the blips behind the curtain anymore. The audience wasn’t laughing, wasn’t marveling anymore.

I left the stage and asked him to wait there patiently. I needed to pat my forehead, cup water in my hands and put my face in it. I just needed time away, time in the privacy of the corridor outside that Relationship Auditorium. Not to talk to passersby, but to walk along it and look outside at the real world. To see how different it was from what I had been standing in.

Was I born to adlib plays, or was I born to write them? And watch someone act it out – just the way I wanted? Did I need more Life Outside to teach me to Love Inside, to write of love in real-life terms?

I looked at the clock hanging on the long wall. Nineteen minutes past. The second hand coming closer to twenty. Was it a wretched dictator? A hateful thing that could only tick to talk, a rude and constant countdown to the end of my life. Or was it my savior? A patient reminder that the minutes were mine to use till they all ran out, not numbers I could take and put in the palm of anyone else. It forced me to live before it forced me to die.

A smile. The Brighter Side of the Darker Half of the Story.

Three months and one month more to come I have spent here. I’m going to Israel. I’m going to Turkey. I’m going to Latin America. And then I’m going to Teach. And then I’m going to Write while I Travel the World some more.

This was my First Love – those dreams I crafted since childhood, writing books at Gigi’s house and teaching stuffed animals how to read. Because that’s who I am, that’s who I’ve always been –

the Writer within.