"I can't find, oh the right romantic line...."
Because sometimes it’s the only way I really feel alive.
She was a symphony and when you played the music she cleared your head of anything else but the notes. She didn’t look at me but I knew she felt me because there was no way that the force of so many emotions passes through the air and goes unheeded. Her slender fingers played with the handle of the coffee cup that held no coffee and she spun the packet of sugar with her other hand as if she needed to remind anyone of her sweetness.
I stood there because that’s all I could do. I watched her play with that little white cup and thought about how everything I was feeling was merely a drop in the ocean that was roaring inside her. I held my beer in my hand, gripping the neck of the bottle with a certainty that only comes from true drinking. There was no camaraderie in my action, only the seeking of that mythical world inside the bottle that we search for when we want to escape from everything on the outside. I wondered what a four-dollar beer tasted like in this place because I had only held it so far, letting the condensation drip along my fingers.
Her eyes focused on me and she didn’t look away. I was compelled to the other side of the counter, standing there without my wall to lean against and the beer still swinging from my hand.
“Do you remember what it felt like when we kissed?” she asked as if the question were as common an inquiry about the weather. “Do you remember that strange heavy emotion that wells up in the middle of your chest and starts to spread out like it is blending with everything? How sweet it was, how extremely intense it was?”
I nodded. It seemed I couldn’t speak, or at least I wasn’t supposed too. The light was falling on her back and when I focused on her eyes it seemed as if she had wings. I had the feeling she was waiting for me to say something but I couldn’t open my mouth to make the words. Instead I pulled a pen from my pocket, resting my beer on the counter I took the napkin next to her coffee cup and wrote, “I will always remember it.”
She frowned at me and went back to running her finger along the glazed surface. After several minutes she spoke again. “Sometimes I can’t stand the way you are.” She had this way of saying things when she was really thinking about them and she was doing it now.
I shrugged and picked up my beer again but still just held it. Realizing a long time ago that there was nothing I could do that would bring me into her world again but everything that could leave me watching from further out left me feeling helpless but there was nothing in a bottle for that. Everything was already out there, whether she saw it or only I knew it, satisfying her now wasn’t something I was capable of doing alone. She wasn’t sitting at the counter because of me.
In all her sophistication and experience, the wisdom in her eyes, she was no different than I was or anyone else now. Things were far beyond her control but they had caught her and were holding her now, even at a counter miles away from anything. I wasn’t there because she had asked, part of me knowing she was waiting for me to walk out the door because it was hard. I knew that she could read me though and that what she was sensing upset her but I had no way of hiding it. There was truly nothing I could do. We were suddenly so very human.
“You’re going to make me leave.” It was muttered low enough that I questioned if I had heard it. For a millisecond it was what could I say to change her mind but then it was the realization.
“You aren’t mine to keep.”
“So you want me to go? You are going to be like all the rest and abandon me? Fine.” I could feel her eyes washing over me, seeing her jaw line setting itself in defiance, prepared for what in her mind was already coming.
“We can be near each other without hurting. We can have lives that aren’t each other but have each other in them. We can’t hold onto each other, we always have walked together,” and when I finished she was silent.
There was nothing else to say because anything else would talking for the sake of it. There was hurt, confusion and indecision but none of it was about the real reason, it was all reaction. The reason we were there wasn’t something you could talk out but it had changed us. I could see the way her body still tapered down, the firm tone the subtle strength that was so much a part of her and I had known so well, that I had slept holding. It was one of those moments where you are entirely somewhere else and all your experiences are of that echo. She is the feel of Rome distilled and the scent of mountains. Maybe that’s part of my problem. That my dreams are never too far from her so even in them there is a circle. The dreams needed to include the new depth in her eyes, the memories of her skin need the new scars underneath.
A few chords from a piano glided by and I asked her to dance without thinking. It was the only way, without trying to solve anything, just to be. As we took the few steps out onto the floor the notes started moving through her and she started to fade away. I realized that the music had always been playing, this was just the bridge.
I saw the sunrise in her eyes, the reflection like a flash that woke me. I was underneath heavy blankets and still clutching the tail of my imagination as I crawled into the gray morning. Living by the lake there are dawns when the sand and wind mix. I could feel it so much that if I fell out my window it wouldn’t have surprised me to land on the beach. It is winter now and there are no birds so it was only waves that I could hear but they are too distant from my home on the bluff.
You’d think I am crazy like this, still lingering on the lake. Imagine being in a city, a city with tall buildings and lighted streets that stretch out in long lines so that you can glance down the hill and see the pavement reaching for something unseen. Even when it feels empty it is still beautiful and maybe it’s only because you are alone in it that you see it more. See the way the trees arch over the cracked streets and the lights that streak up the sides of those buildings and paint the bottoms of the clouds. Is this where we find God or fate or whatever answer we hold onto when the ripples cease to be and we run out of stones worn smooth by all the effort we pour over them. That the lake is where everything that is on the other side of my tie resides. That in the offices I don’t tell them that pens and paper are meant for poetry and not the notes of man trying to find self-importance in figures. That this is what they want me to be but its world I never feel, it’s not what flows in my blood. When emotions are beyond the realm of intellect even these words sound hollow and even the most beautiful strokes of a pen are lacking. That despite the sunlight I can feel her carrying her tears. How it seems like she could weep for an eternity but the release never comes. We are afraid we will drown in it.
We built science and religion as a means for living but the way light changes is art. That is what we live for. Where love can be a catastrophic mathematical error in which two plus two equals five. Where the question is scientific but the answer is artistic.
The promises of potential are the worst to make, the hardest to keep and the longest to linger. So rarely kept they sneak up on us in the realization of that moment when you knew you were going to kiss before your lips ever met and there it was.
part one:
She was a symphony and when you played the music she cleared your head of anything else but the notes. She didn’t look at me but I knew she felt me because there was no way that the force of so many emotions passes through the air and goes unheeded. Her slender fingers played with the handle of the coffee cup that held no coffee and she spun the packet of sugar with her other hand as if she needed to remind anyone of her sweetness.
I stood there because that’s all I could do. I watched her play with that little white cup and thought about how everything I was feeling was merely a drop in the ocean that was roaring inside her. I held my beer in my hand, gripping the neck of the bottle with a certainty that only comes from true drinking. There was no camaraderie in my action, only the seeking of that mythical world inside the bottle that we search for when we want to escape from everything on the outside. I wondered what a four-dollar beer tasted like in this place because I had only held it so far, letting the condensation drip along my fingers.
Her eyes focused on me and she didn’t look away. I was compelled to the other side of the counter, standing there without my wall to lean against and the beer still swinging from my hand.
“Do you remember what it felt like when we kissed?” she asked as if the question were as common an inquiry about the weather. “Do you remember that strange heavy emotion that wells up in the middle of your chest and starts to spread out like it is blending with everything? How sweet it was, how extremely intense it was?”
I nodded. It seemed I couldn’t speak, or at least I wasn’t supposed too. The light was falling on her back and when I focused on her eyes it seemed as if she had wings. I had the feeling she was waiting for me to say something but I couldn’t open my mouth to make the words. Instead I pulled a pen from my pocket, resting my beer on the counter I took the napkin next to her coffee cup and wrote, “I will always remember it.”
She frowned at me and went back to running her finger along the glazed surface. After several minutes she spoke again. “Sometimes I can’t stand the way you are.” She had this way of saying things when she was really thinking about them and she was doing it now.
I shrugged and picked up my beer again but still just held it. Realizing a long time ago that there was nothing I could do that would bring me into her world again but everything that could leave me watching from further out left me feeling helpless but there was nothing in a bottle for that. Everything was already out there, whether she saw it or only I knew it, satisfying her now wasn’t something I was capable of doing alone. She wasn’t sitting at the counter because of me.
In all her sophistication and experience, the wisdom in her eyes, she was no different than I was or anyone else now. Things were far beyond her control but they had caught her and were holding her now, even at a counter miles away from anything. I wasn’t there because she had asked, part of me knowing she was waiting for me to walk out the door because it was hard. I knew that she could read me though and that what she was sensing upset her but I had no way of hiding it. There was truly nothing I could do. We were suddenly so very human.
“You’re going to make me leave.” It was muttered low enough that I questioned if I had heard it. For a millisecond it was what could I say to change her mind but then it was the realization.
“You aren’t mine to keep.”
“So you want me to go? You are going to be like all the rest and abandon me? Fine.” I could feel her eyes washing over me, seeing her jaw line setting itself in defiance, prepared for what in her mind was already coming.
“We can be near each other without hurting. We can have lives that aren’t each other but have each other in them. We can’t hold onto each other, we always have walked together,” and when I finished she was silent.
There was nothing else to say because anything else would talking for the sake of it. There was hurt, confusion and indecision but none of it was about the real reason, it was all reaction. The reason we were there wasn’t something you could talk out but it had changed us. I could see the way her body still tapered down, the firm tone the subtle strength that was so much a part of her and I had known so well, that I had slept holding. It was one of those moments where you are entirely somewhere else and all your experiences are of that echo. She is the feel of Rome distilled and the scent of mountains. Maybe that’s part of my problem. That my dreams are never too far from her so even in them there is a circle. The dreams needed to include the new depth in her eyes, the memories of her skin need the new scars underneath.
A few chords from a piano glided by and I asked her to dance without thinking. It was the only way, without trying to solve anything, just to be. As we took the few steps out onto the floor the notes started moving through her and she started to fade away. I realized that the music had always been playing, this was just the bridge.
I saw the sunrise in her eyes, the reflection like a flash that woke me. I was underneath heavy blankets and still clutching the tail of my imagination as I crawled into the gray morning. Living by the lake there are dawns when the sand and wind mix. I could feel it so much that if I fell out my window it wouldn’t have surprised me to land on the beach. It is winter now and there are no birds so it was only waves that I could hear but they are too distant from my home on the bluff.
You’d think I am crazy like this, still lingering on the lake. Imagine being in a city, a city with tall buildings and lighted streets that stretch out in long lines so that you can glance down the hill and see the pavement reaching for something unseen. Even when it feels empty it is still beautiful and maybe it’s only because you are alone in it that you see it more. See the way the trees arch over the cracked streets and the lights that streak up the sides of those buildings and paint the bottoms of the clouds. Is this where we find God or fate or whatever answer we hold onto when the ripples cease to be and we run out of stones worn smooth by all the effort we pour over them. That the lake is where everything that is on the other side of my tie resides. That in the offices I don’t tell them that pens and paper are meant for poetry and not the notes of man trying to find self-importance in figures. That this is what they want me to be but its world I never feel, it’s not what flows in my blood. When emotions are beyond the realm of intellect even these words sound hollow and even the most beautiful strokes of a pen are lacking. That despite the sunlight I can feel her carrying her tears. How it seems like she could weep for an eternity but the release never comes. We are afraid we will drown in it.
We built science and religion as a means for living but the way light changes is art. That is what we live for. Where love can be a catastrophic mathematical error in which two plus two equals five. Where the question is scientific but the answer is artistic.
The promises of potential are the worst to make, the hardest to keep and the longest to linger. So rarely kept they sneak up on us in the realization of that moment when you knew you were going to kiss before your lips ever met and there it was.
part one: