Let's Not Pretend

Let's not pretend we care when we don't. I know we're supposed to, it's decreed by some sacred law that you are supposed to care about me, and me, I'm supposed to care about you.

But somewhere along the way it all unravelled and I feel guilty that the thought of you conjures up such reluctance in my belly that I think I would prefer anything but contact.

And you will die, because you have to...it's what we all do...we die slowly. Or fast.

It doesn't matter.

If you don't care about me and I don't care about you...will I even hear when you do?

Or will you hear when they find my body...maybe three years later, maybe sooner...because my cats, you know they will cry and maybe alert people that I'm dead, maybe they will eat me...a corpse is just meat after all, who cares?

We were once something to each other. I thought we were much. I thought we were all.

But years and lies and misunderstandings erode what is between us and now...there is just this great empty feeling.

It's like a plug was unstoppered and the water flowed down, down, down the drain...until there were only the dregs, drops of water.

The water has dried.

There is no feeling left.

Only weariness.

Only this great weariness wondering how I am going to fill this life, these years I have left to me, this body which keeps breaking, this hollow heart.

Once I loved you.

Now I don't.

Misunderstandings, real or imagined

I could blame it on the fact that I was tired, nay, exhausted, but then, it wouldn't be the whole story. The truth is, you have become a burden and I am looking for a way to offload you. I find today that no, you didn't lie to me, that you did in fact have chest pains when you said you did and that I simply jumped to conclusions without checking.

And then, I didn't call to check up on you or visit you.

And then, I ignored your calls when you did, in fact, call me.

I am sorry.

I will try to make amends.

I Thought I Dreamed Of You Last Night

You breeze into my dreams but when I wake I can't remember. Was it really you I saw? Were you crying? Did I feel your sadness? Did it fill the world?

You know how grief can be.

It gets quieter...I promise you that. But, no, you never stop feeling the loss. Sometimes the pang wrenches you. Sometimes, it is as soft as a sigh.

You will always remember because you loved. Isn't it wonderful to know that you loved? That in this case it was not half truths or prevarication? That the one true thing in your life was your love for the one now gone?

I thought I dreamed of you. But I only remember as I am about to fall asleep again.

And then a feeling steals over me. In this quietness. In this hush.

In this silence.

I remember you.

For death to be real, it has to seep into your bones. Otherwise you wake up feeling light, before you remember. Otherwise you wake up thinking everything is OK, as it was. Otherwise, you forget.

For death to be real, it must become a part of you.

This loss.

This absence.

That goes on forever. As you search in the dark for what is no longer there.

The ones who see things that you cannot tell you, don't worry, he is still here. They speak to him, they dream of him.

But for you there is emptiness and silence. You hold on so tightly. And then you let go.

You let go.

You let go......

Once Again, This Time With Feeling

I have to relinquish the blame game. I'm just so tired of trying to figure out when and how I was lied to. And it doesn't really matter. I guess, if you could lie, well, I mustn't really mean that much to you. And so I have to take that in, and move on. And relinquish part of my identity and the things that used to go with it.

It's funny how when you believe a liar and you find out about it, you realise that everyone was looking at you with contempt. It's not the liar who is at fault, but you, for believing them. Surely, they say, you should have known better. You should have noted the inconsistencies...where are your supposedly finely honed instincts?

The problem is, you shut these off for some people. Looking at them through this lens is so hard, so painful. But then, once you know they're liars, you cannot look at them through any other lens. Everything they say sounds suspect, insincere. Everything they do, there's a motive behind it. Not one honest bone in their bodies.

No, there is no nuance, no inflection, no middle ground.

You're either all or nothing.

And you my dear, have proved to be nothing.

And now, I have to divorce myself from you, to not answer the phone when you call with your stupid urgent summons, imperious as if you had a right to be.

My life needs a spring cleaning.

And the first thing I need to get rid of, is you.

I Just Want You To Know Who I Am

Here's what they don't know. They don't know that I went down, to where you died, to gather your spirit and bring it back. They don't know that you were in my apartment until your one week was up and it was time for you to transition. Or that I cried so hard every day, willing myself to let you go, but making bargains with God.

I just couldn't love you back.

Everything becomes unstuck when I have a glass of old wine, stuck in my fridge for weeks and weeks as I waited to take that third glass. But I wanted to drink and I didn't. And then I read her book, or at least I started to, that heady mix of everything...that feeling of coming unglued...and then, your name and I knew she was talking about you, only you.

And then I realised that while you were simply intrigued, because she seemed so different, so extreme, so whirling in different colours - basins of blood, cerulean blue, quivering green (a cold sweat covers me, trembling seizes my body and I am greener than grass...) but she, well, she fell headlong into your body, your arms (encircling her in this friendly way, it meant nothing, not really, you were intrigued is all)....and so she wrote about you undisguised...part of the book is wish fulfilment...it is ostensibly about something important but really, really, there you are...her happily ever after, her dream come true, her port in the storm.

Did you know?

Did you suspect?

Did she tell you?

How does it feel to fall, regardless, to know that in falling, there was no net and she could not hope to be caught? How does it feel that she fell, knowing you would not catch her, that you would step away neatly, the way you do...undisturbed by the torrents of emotion, unmoved?

Everything's made to be broken.

It's been a strange day of hitting the streets early, before the jam, to get to my assignment a half hour early, when I expected to be late....and that strange half light that plays on my windscreen, and the blisters on the backs of my feet and a meeting where I spoke but didn't take in anything because my mind, my mind, was awhirl with rainbow and otters and nothing in particular because I couldn't get anything to coalesce.

Why does he sing with his face, stiff, expressionless? Does he know that untouched and untouchable is desirable, despairing?

I am not sure.

I wish you knew who I was.