Left for Dead on the Road of Love
I am beset on all sides by heartbreak this week. My friends are all falling out of love. Why do people say they fell out of love? Shouldn’t it be ran out of love? FLED love? Knocking over furniture on the way to the door? Or is that just me…
That smudge on your calendars at the end of March? That’s actually the rubber I laid leaving the last guy I dated. And HE didn’t even do anything WRONG.
It’s been a long time since I was heartbroken, so it kinda comes as a shock to find I’m the first port of call for my friends when they are. I have no idea why anyone would want to speak to me when matters of the heart turn pear-shaped. As a world class relationship dodger, my counseling approach falls into one of two categories:
The So….? tango, whereby I completely miss the part about the guy leaving being a negative development,
or
The WalkItOffBuckUpSoldier rumba, which is similar to the So…? tango but invites participants to dust off their pants and get that foot back in the stirrup.
Being a horsey chick, I hang with strong, independent women. Women who have more than a passing interest in whips and leather. We actually know how to use them. And we scrub up alright when we’re not perched on the post and rail being Chaps McStinkyPants (okay, granted - we’re perched there a lot).
So when you ask me Why? I gotta tell ya - it’s hard to imagine why any man would want to be anywhere but hanging off your delightful arms, my dears. I have only this to say:
They have clean taken leave of their senses.
I don’t know why, and I don’t much care. They are clearly in need of medication. Perhaps they have had a lobotomy or shock therapy is indicated. It’s hard to tell from here when their looming satellite of Stupidity is casting such a pall over this earth.
What I do know is:
This too shall pass.
And yes, P. I wasn't always such a hardarse. It’s been a long time since I was heartbroken. I was once. And I’m not anymore. I can’t tell you when, but it all goes away. Promise. And you know I don’t make those very often these days. J
Blindside
Perhaps the wind picked up?
And then a deluge
fit for Noah’s vindication…
the rain beating down
heard but unseen
in the darkness…
I may as well have closed my eyes
and made the trip completely blind
across the gravel driveway
limping on the sides of my arches
into the stables
prickles in my feet
the din in there was awesome
a cacophy of rain on tin
as riotous and angry as I
that first day
at the gate you said:
oh no…
my buried wheel beside the barn
my 1800s mudbrick house
my garden and the line of tagasaste
my fishes pond
my sloping paddocks
stretching back away along the winter creek
my boomers lounging near the dam
my dead and fallen eucalypt beside the post and rail
her hushed abandoned secrets crumbling back into the loam
my midnight spot where impromptu cups of tea
delighted the copper horse
beneath a sliver of the southern moon
that first day
at the gate
you saw it all and said:
oh no…
and in that act
foretold the year
I may as well have closed my eyes
and made the trip completely blind
across the months into this night
limping on the sides of my arches
into the stables
prickles in my feet
you and this place
just two more things I couldn’t hold
passing through like the storm
leaving me battered
shouting at hay bales