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{closer} copper set I am standing in the theater where we both were – that night in June. I am up on the balcony where you told me you sat during the show. I am watching the band bounce on the circus stage below, but only with one eye. My other red eye is looking around, guessing which seat you sat in that night. When nobody is looking I sit in several. I lean back, both my arms on the rests. Look around to see what you may have… And while I have no idea which seats you sat in - for the first time in weeks I feel close to you. As close as you would let me be. Somewhere, you left a part of yourself. And I am still searching for it… + It is now over a week since we began the separation. The process of love’s removal. As if it were as simple as cleaning the gutters in the Spring. …Five or six long and sullen months from now… …to recover from the four months that we shared… Please, anything - distract me. I know, it was only four months. And I know, we didn’t meet that first night in the theater. Neither of us knew of the other. But the next night we both know that everything changed. And now, four months and two broken hearts later and I’m not so sure we know as much about each other as we had thought. I don’t know if this is what healing feels like, but everything has corners on it. Everything hurts going down: Music. Seems like it was all written by you in some wicked state. If not you then surely by someone stuck in a purgatory of sadness. Scents. Taste like they found their provenance in your mouth. If not that then surely they were carried in by these biting winter winds. Screaming-in on the tails of the jet stream. Forever teasing, teasing… Touch… I cannot feel you any longer. Like it was something you could take back from me all the while. And now I am standing in the wake of your ghost, in this haunted theater. Quicker, faster, away from me… + Frank is standing next to me at the bar. Frank is rich. He is buying. I take a drink. I haven’t talked to Frank in weeks. Still, as if I have something written on my face, he says, “Think of it this way: Another girl will come around and break your heart and then you won’t even remember this one.” I look down at my beer. Suspicious of what everybody seems to know. I tell him, “Let me drink about it.” + I am standing outside the theater, looking away. I am not thinking about you. I am distracted by voices. It is snowing flakes half the size of my hand. They are coming down from the dark void in sheets, a kaleidoscope of prism flakes through decaying street lights. I hold my hand out, palm up. Suddenly I feel you at my back. Quicker. Bigger. + John says I understand what happened. I don’t know this yet, but in just a few minutes John will be up on stage, screaming anthems and mantras down at us all. As though he is possessed by hope and joy and everything absent or distorted. In just over an hour I will walk away from this place, having seen one of the most beautiful spectacles I have ever seen in my life. And no, you weren’t in these hollow halls. But for now: John sighs. He says, yes the girl is gone. John puts his hand on my shoulder blade – that one place you always touched me. He says, whatever intervention we can all perform… He says we need Cusak. A boombox. And that song. The one that will say anything… John says you just have to raise it up over your head. Stand outside, for however long it takes. Even if it is snowing. Raise it up and over your head. John sighs. He says, I know – most things take longer than they do in the movies. And they don’t always have happy endings. + There is a guy that sings and plays a blue, blue guitar. On my way home, tucked-in the heat of my car, cut-off from the slow whirling wind and sheets of snow, he was singing. His name is Gregory and he bellowed, “I miss the taste of you. Red hearts and the dust of June… Gone black and blue…” Many things belong to me. But I do not believe that the color red is in that basket anymore. In July we drank its legs of wine. But now… Red is your color. Waiting at the stopped light I raise both of my open palms… Yes I know – strange and possibly sappy – but love has to be expelled from somewhere. And I know: for most, four months is not much time – not enough anyway that we should be mourning so laboriously. But we both know that this was bigger than those assumptions. And we both know that this was a lesson in many things. Not the least of which was acceleration. Quicker. Bigger. Faster. Boom. + This is my song. It isn’t ours. I am singing it out loud. Cushions of heat and thousands of miles between us. Goodbye. I am bleary-eyed and swirling with unbelief. Goodbye. I will never see you again. Like that moment when my pant cuffs caught fire, love too always begins so beautifully and mysteriously - but always, always ends so bitterly and ugly. |
