May 13, 2010

Home

When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before. You start soaking the dishes we’ve already cleaned in the sink. I go to water the plants, but the bright red and yellow tulips along our windowsill have become dead, crisp pieces too bruised to use as bookmarks. We eat dinner in silence, with the orchestra of a careless fork scraping the bottoms of our fine plates. I ask if I should put on a record, after. Relax a little with the only jazz album we can both agree on. But you shake your head, I’m tired.  I’m tired too, but I bit my lip from saying it.

You disappear to the bathroom and I can hear the water running for far longer than it should be. It’s only the sink, I can tell that you are not showering. I put on a record anyway, a low, mournful album that I used to love, and hum along. Do you remember the apartment as when we first got it? The way the chandelier looked so absolutely exquisite, its little crystal shards reflecting everything we had hopes for. I ran my fingers along the exposed brick walls, a dream I’d had since I first moved to the city. And the fire escape, the view!

I remember those first few nights when we sat outside with the relief of the summer nights dancing on our skin, and we sat with our shoulders and knees touching and each holding a glass of wine, the cheapest we could find from the store that wasn’t even truly a liquor store. The gallery was still unrealistic, a fantasy dream, but how we loved to dream. It was a sweet dream. We even planned the openings, who’d perform, who’s show up and wearing what. Could we believe that you were going to business school? Yes, for the sake of that, for making it come true.

And then, those days you spent with your shoulders hunched over the tiny print of textbooks. I stood behind you and peered at those mystical figures, and kneaded your shoulders with my newly painted nails. You smiled and pressed a hand on mine, and I kissed your right temple and held the taste of the strands of your chestnut curls on my tongue. And then, no matter how tired you were, no matter how late you came to bed, I could always feel you pressed against me, demanding attention. How happy I was to give it! Nights I nearly fell asleep with you, still hard, in my curled hands. 

We got our gallery, of course. Were those the happiest days of our lives? Lugging crates of cheap wine and plastic cups to display on those cramped dark wood tables, smiling with your hand on my back at the increasingly beautiful people who came in, the girls with their dark lips and sculptural dresses, the men with sharp shoes and shirts unbuttoned just so. Sneaking kisses in between questions from our adoring patrons, going home exhausted, elated, clawing at each other with the unrestrained lust that success enflamed. I screamed when you tore the delicate hems of certain peach chemises, but secretly liked it.

Until it became too much to buy another slip, and then we were hardly paying the rent on the apartment. You spent hours in front of the computer perfectly a resume, writing endless copies of the same letter advertising yourself. If I tried to soften the strain in your shoulders you snapped my hands away. It hurt. Eventually companies wrote back. You took out the stiff, navy business suit and still smiled when I straightened the tie.

You got the job, we gave up the gallery. I stopped trying to give you massages and started writing more. You stopped asking to read my work. I wouldn’t have let you, anyway, those stories were filled with pieces of broken vases, bleak dirty affairs I was too afraid to carry out. When you started staying overnight at the office I stopped being scared. The men I met always reminded me of the you from before, with fireworks of ideas still sparkling in their scraggy beards and brown shoes. One painted a portrait of me that you noticed. You didn’t comment.

In Barcelona I watched your eyes chase after the tanned, long legs of the girls with the wild long hair and said nothing. We slept curled on opposite sites of the bed. But did it matter? We could afford vacations any time. I cried most nights and spent hundreds of dollars buying products to cover up the dark circles in the mornings. I fell in love with the man who played Spanish guitar under the silver moon and tried to hold you. But, you were tired, you said. You went back to the hotel and I watched him alone, with my heart singing with him.

The water finally stops, and I look toward the bathroom door. I know what you are going to tell me when you come out. You found a new apartment. Bigger, brighter, a loft with a doorman and a view of Central Park. I know that this apartment belongs to someone else. Someone who will use the fire-escape and run her fingers along the bricks, laughing. I know that I won’t bring the typewriter to my new office. The ribbon is extinct, and it is heavy, dirty. But I will have the bookshelf of my love affairs, I will have the drawers of us, from years past. I know that I’ll look out the bright window, into the crisp blue sky, and I will still see what we saw together the very first time we went for a walk in the park: a word, sliding from behind the shapes of the clouds, revealing a promise, a vision, a dream, aloud. And even with you gone, yes, I will stay true to those words. For how much longer will you be here? I can barely hear you now. 

/44 notes /01:29 AM

44 Notes

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    this. Almost forgot...worry, I’ll be writing much more
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