It’s hard
to know when something is over, without a beginning.
The day
started out like any other day, ordinary. I wrote, I read, I went out to play,
just like any other ordinary day.
I didn't
know how small or how large a part I would play, but we found each other, and
we played with words, around her life and in mine. Soundlessly lurking, that’s how it was
to be, for her, not for me. Words came
easy, and then got hard from experimenting with taboos, my guess. I said, “I love you.”
She leaned
the umbrella of words in front of the sun, blocking out the rays, a shadow
crossed her face. I leaned
in and pulled back the umbrella to pick up my words from across the arc, the
static was palpable. I
needed to see clearly those eyes her pictures revealed, only her eyes could
tell a truth she so cleverly hid with the manipulation of her umbrella. She needed to maintain, she said, a
distance from the sun. I
experimented with speaking the truth, at least truth as I perceived, but it was
not how she saw it.
I
sheltered my words against a wall, the wall she leaned against from her side,
balance is what was between us, a solid wall of balance and shelter and
protection and shadows to hide beside. When
my words got too close, the wall grew higher, when I shortened my words, the
shadow receded and I could catch a glimpse, just a fraction of a nose, a
forehead, a chin, and even an eye on occasion.
Experimentation
grew forced, I couldn't keep it up, for wanting to see her whole face. I was tired, I was weary, and I was
frustrated knowing there was a whole face behind that hiding place. I knew it was wrong for me to head
into that space, but I was overwhelmed with a feeling I couldn't fathom as
real. I needed to find
realness somehow, someway, someday.
She wasn't
receptive, she found me critical and offensive, attacking her sensibilities,
her norm, her quiet time, her aloneness, her cultivated art. I wanted to change all of that, the
stupid being that I am; why couldn't I just be satisfied to lurk in the way she
did? Impatience comes with
my territory.
I am sorry
for my honesty with my words. Perception is everything. Experimentation without perception
becomes a danger zone. We
never established what the word friendship meant to either of us. The deep connection, as she said, was
there. But what does that
mean when two people can’t build on that connection? It is too deep to delve, too deep to
unearth, is it as deep as Murakami’s well he put his character in, that god
awful well, the solitude that nothing else can describe, I felt it, yes, I know
it.
Can I change who I am to meet the needs of someone else, when I really don't
know what those needs are unless they become revealed? Or is it another’s responsibility to
bend the umbrella back a bit and let a ray shine into the daylight hours, or is
it to be two people who climb the wall at the same time, rock by rock, one
stone at a time, again and again; crawling with only bloody stumps; fingers
left behind, leaving a swath of stain that marks the very spot two people gave
into the disastrous place of letting go and refusing entry.
“I'm fucking
sorry”, she said.
I pivot
around and take in a glimpse of daylight on my side of the wall, but
when I look up I see a black cloud above my head, so black I can’t
recognize where the wall is any longer. I
cry for that wall, for the prints our fingers left upon each stone. I cry for the moments I lost
while hunting and not finding; for looking and not seeing, for searching by day
and by night, only finding a closed umbrella and no one standing there.
I cry with
that empty feeling in my gut, my throat closes, the water in my eyes stream
down and fall onto my chest, my breast, my belly, my lap. I can’t see for the loss that is in
front of me. I can no
longer see what it is I was trying to find. I can not longer see for the dark
shadows that now cover my heart.
I
lost. I experimented, I
searched, I dug into that well, and I lost; the light, the only way to find an
opening was through the light. I
plunged into darkness, the hell that seizes the muscles, the pain beneath the
layers of skin of holy need. I
was no longer needed. Plain
and simple: She didn't need
me.
I died a
death that day, there was no turning; neither front nor sideways, not to the
left, nor to the right; no amount of pleading would work, for she shut the door
soundly, and the window and the curtain, she shut every avenue I could walk
down. I stood. I stood in the dark, and that’s where
I remain.
No
compromise - No middle ground - No mediation - Non existent.
I thought about butterflies today. I thought about how beautiful they are;
I thought how beautiful my once upon a time friend was to me, once upon a
time. I thought about how
these delicate wings try so hard to keep a body floating up in the air. I thought of her.
I wondered at the human balance. Whatever
that balance was, I lost that balance in a few hard truthful words - I
upset her balance; a teeter-totter balance that was difficult to maintain – I
caused her to fall because of the weight of me. I can only enter into a butterfly's
world by watching from afar, I cannot touch, I can only tearfully
watch, for if I touch a wing, the butterfly will surely die, and so will
I.
