fearless

The room was street light blue, soaked in middle of the night quiet. He was sound asleep. Splayed out on his stomach, facing the closet and not me. There were tiny curls in his silhouette. Poking out from his mash of dark dark brown hair. My hand on his back, he was breathing the kind of breaths that happen only in sleep. Deep inhales and savored exhales. I was tired and groggy but open eyed. Sleep had come and went with his movements. This was all new. The sleeping together. His rhythmic breathing. The wee hour silence. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale.

If we were a picture just then, it would have been in soft focus.

With all the power of a misspoken sentence or midnight telephone call, he stirred. I slid my hand from his back, tucked it under my head. He rearranged himself in the blankets and sleepfluffed his pillows. His legs chased around for a new best place to rest. He was a flurry of activity and blankets and arms. Then. He settled slow. His legs, still. His arms, tucked. Before he laid his head down, he leaned over with barely open eyes and half asleep kissed me. Soft, quick and perfect. Then his head, nestled in pillows.

And me. Kissed. Wondering how he even knew where I was in the mess of queen size sheets and clingy kitten and my tangle of dark dark brown curls.

Slowed by sleep and dulled by tired, my defenses were down. Clear as day. Bright as snow. True as a compass it came. Not love or hope or contentment. Not thankfulness or peace or wanting to stop time. Instead it was the fear that has kept him at arms length by part of me while being pulled close by the rest. How. Would. I. Ever. Get. Over. Him? In the flawless of that kiss and the happy it washed over me, my first thought upon returning my hand to the small of his back was of him not being there anymore.

What a waste of a moment.

Unavailable. He fits the mold. There is a river between us even when it’s cozy and quiet and smooshed together and his breathing is slow and his skin is warm and oh. There is no talk of running away or turning our lives upside down for this chemistry that makes him kiss me half asleep. That’s the safe of this. The scary is that he is perfect. For me. Curious and talented and complex. Playful and creative and whip smart. He’s a million piece puzzle. He knows how I work, like a machine, watching me push and pull him back and forth. And for all this attraction and friendship and everything he can surely feel in my kiss, he doesn’t think he’s special because he sees this pushing and pulling as something that anyone could be the object of. Any married man or long distance fling could step in and I maybe wouldn’t even notice, he thinks. Doesn’t he know I’ve passed up dozens of them in favor of the few but.

There’s nothing you can say to that once you’ve nodded your head to the pushing. To the pulling. Cat gets your tongue.

I am this day dreamy hopeless romantic sparkle filled girl who is absolutely terrified of letting myself have the thing I’ve craved my whole life. I am 34 years old and I have met only three boys who I could have loved for ages or maybe even forever. They are spaced in almost exact 6 year increments. I pushed and pulled the first and the second until they gave up. At 22. At 28. Now, again. This one is the third, and for all his thinking that is he nothing unique in this, he is wrong. He is like a comet, passing though bright and lovely.

The kind you stay up til 3am to see.

He is different in that he is here and unavailable. The unavailability of the others came in the shape of a time zone. A couple hours ahead and I was safe to bare my soul to honeyed voices and handwritten letters and hundreds of sweetly worded emails. One I knew for 7 years the other for 6 months. This one’s timeline remains to be seen but for the first time I have no control over the obvious obstacle I’ve put in the way of us. It’s not a plane ticket. It’s not a few hundred dollars. It’s a whole other life and a whole other set of issues and fears and decisions. None of them mine. So he watches the unraveling of me. The simultaneous pushing him away and holding onto him with all my might. With my complaints of the situation, my need for reassurance, my sometimes cold shoulder I must be like a carnival ride.

But I’m doing the best I can.

I hold my worries and fears and not good enoughs up the light as much as i can stand. I’ve spent hours trying to sort it out in the pale green room, sitting across from her. Her notebook in her lap, her kind smile. Her dozens of questions. Patterns emerge like wallpaper and I can see all my smoke and mirrors in the occasional light of day. The irony of this one is not lost on me. I’m as close as I’ve ever been to letting someone love me but he is a million miles further away than a plane ticket or time zone. It’s a disappointment that sits with me sometimes and I buy it a cup of tea and a few shortbread cookies to make it feel better, but it only feels so much better.

Even when the tea is perfectly steeped and the cookies imported from Scotland.

There won’t be a six year wait this time. The gaps were where I fell into relationships that were comfortable like slippers but held little real promise. I would pretend and plan lives and move us forward but I knew there was something askew. I’d be lonely sometimes. I miss something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Years and years spent trying to hold together good enough with duct tape and bobby pins. Not this time. This time I won’t settle for anything less than what I’ve glimpsed with this boy. I want the wow I feel when I hold his hand. I want the happy I feel when I see him smile. I want that connection. That bond. That’s what I’m waiting for.

That four times in a lifetime spark dressed up in blue jeans and a clever t-shirt who just happens to need glasses.

sugar

It would be just like that, you see. He holding on to me. Something in China would have fallen off a shelf so that I bumped into him on the bus. The old woman with the walker was cursing under her breath. Full of vinegar. Bottled up bottle rocket. But him. He went down like sugar. The tattoos on his arm remind me of a girl from a lifetime ago. He was nothing much more than right that second. Slipping me peppermints and a thank you. Showing him the door. The other one. Mixed up novel of who dunnit and who cares. Murky like the ocean he thinks. Dirty like a city puddle, I do. But her, when she opens her mouth daffodiles fall out. Sometimes I gather them neat and lay them at her feet. There is charm in the other. Southern drawl, southern slow. She bats her eyes at him and he finds himeself wanting more. But for me.

The movie theatre was pin drop quiet.

Painting her oddness on like fingernail polish, she leaves the house for the store. Mismatched socks and derby hats. She walks in sandles made before she was born. How did she reconize him so fast so quick. Like it was. Like it was. Ah. Like it was a movie. “Do you want me to tell it like boy meets girl and the rest is history or do you want it like a murder mystery? Awww, I’m gonna tell it like a come back story.” Because when I hit this city I was high on fumes. And the boy next to me just was.

Young.

Circling words in magazines and underlining the unimportant parts. Cutting the letter solid pages into strips for paper mache. Making sure to keep the good side up. The good side up. The good. The flour and water make my hands age before my eyes. Smoothing down each strip until it’s hidden. Now we wait for it to dry. I’m making a hot air balloon. She’s making it up as she goes along. Hey, wait. Aren’t we all?

My hair is chocolate brown, he says. And it smells like summer, he whispers.

Who are you anyway? Sometimes I picture his face and wonder how I ever got so lucky. Has it happened already? I think that an airplane just went by. Crawling out my window and drinking coffee on the ledge. We played a game of chinese checkers where I’m pretty sure he let me win. Shared a dougnut (we both wished we had gotten two.) Licking the sugar off our fingers and squinting in the 8am sun. Maybe this is all just a dream. And I’m on that plane really. Going home to say good bye to the boy that saved me.

Like an easter mass. Or like a two dollar bill.

That was a decade ago. Like 6 months or more. Now I’m undressing my soul and watching him look away. I’m sometimes like a car accident. I’m sometimes like an autopsy. I’m sometimes like the best thing that’s ever come his way. When she inhales slow and points her head up to the sky to let it all out I can see her when she was 15. I can see her when she was 51. But sometimes, it’s hard to see her at 35. It’s like time hit her all at once. And everything I said was a lie. An untruth. It was every little insecurity seeping out through my finger tips. Hollow. If you read it twice you would have heard the echo. would have heard the echo. I think i mentioned that before. But the thing is. Here is the thing. It’s like hearts slamming into each other. It’s like a bad science fiction movie. it’s like tapioca pudding. and he thinks it’s all to quiet some part of me that I’m tired of listenting to. Tired of listening. Tired. And there isn’t anything I can say to that no matter how loud i yell the nothing. my words hit his ears like butterflies in fog.

Hold my hand while I take these pills. Let the water trickle from your mouth to mine. Always know your lips always taste best when covered in the happy of me.

pretty like a plastic bag

There’s sun. Warm on my right side. Showing off all the dust on this too heavy laptop. Showing off all my fingerprints and where I wrote “hi” on the screen a few days ago. I haven’t felt this kind of warm in what seems like weeks but is probably just days. And listen. Can you hear the wistfulness in me because it seems to be resting in all the little spaces that letters hold. It’s in the half circles of the lower case e’s. In the triangles of the upper case A’s. The u’s. They hold a perfect little measure of it. Filled up ever so carefully like cups of tea.

Yikes.

I’m such a girl sometimes. Like cups of tea and wistfulness? Good god. I promise I don’t carry around pink streamers and have absolutely no penchant for skipping. Further more, the last time I probably curtseyed while sober was in the 4th grade. But but but. I go and get myself into situations that pave the way for me to write things like “wistfulness” and “cups of tea” and further more these current state of affairs also make me stare out the window for up to 45 minutes at a time. Even worse, these situations occasionally force my head in his direction, soften my eyes and then implant the idea that my, he is quite lovely. Oh boy! Problematic! Wow! Nothing but trouble!

Can anyone lend me a hand here?

I need to be bubble wrapped and set in a safe place, say the garden spot in the Chocolate Factory, for about 6 – 8 months. I can have two visitors a day as long as they are unattractive and utterly lacking in creativity and spunkiness. I should be fed only hot cocoa and shortbread cookies and perhaps taken out for fresh air on Sunday mornings. In the unlikely event of a security breach and an interesting and darling would-be muse stumbles across my path, the following steps should be taken immediately: 1) more bubble wrap 2) more cookies.

So as you can plainly tell, I’ve accidentally fallen in love. And I mean that in the car accidentally kind of way.

This relationship is like a New York City deli at 12:15. I’m holding my number in my left hand and maybe I’ve gotten the head nod and I've maybe gotten the “I’ll be right with you.” but the fact remains that I’m holding onto number 34 and they are clearly only on number 29. So clearly in fact that it’s lit up in three foot tall red light bulb letters behind the counter. I knew going in it would be busy. I knew when I grabbed a number that I’d be waiting in line. But dang, if I’m not disappointed about it anyway. I had this idea that my number would be up right away because, well, I’m maybe the best thing since the sliced bread lining the stainless steal. I figured the sandwich guy would take one look at me and holy shit, that girl with the number 34 in her hand is about as wonderful as pastrami on rye. Step right up, sweetie - - I’m making you a sandwich.

But nope. I’m waiting in a line that might never move. Or move in a year. Or move in a decade. And then maybe I’ll get some email saying “Hey, where did you go and do you still want that sandwich” and I’ll be living in Sweden with some boy named Hans and that will be that. Two ships. Nighttime. No good.

I hate missed opportunity.

I know it’s a big big world and there are thousands of dark haired boys who will be able to make me laugh and who are in need of some type of corrective eyewear but DANG. I had my heart set on this particular one right now and there ain’t much I can do about it other than be sad for a little while. And hurt for a little while. And wanting to lay in traffic for a little while. Side street, not highway. But still. I woulda swam oceans for the chance of him. I woulda bet my mad knitting skillz on us being perfect fits. Instead, he’s sticking with something it’s not in the cards for me to understand. Hey it’s time to cue the theme song and roll the credits. Time to turn up the lights.