An interlude, in which I imagine a torrid love affair of rage and passion
We meet on a bridge, I was throwing daisy petals into the water and watching them go, and she took my hand and pulled off a petal and touched it to my lips, and outlined my mouth with it, and laughing at my surprise told me I looked so serious and solemn, and that I should come with her.
Shortly, I began a torrid love affair with her where we both use each other up in passionate sex that flared like a sunburst and burned like platinum on fire.
But then we had terrible, beastly arguments between the romance and tenderness and we parted in anger after the penultimate fight where she tore my blouse and I slapped her face, leaving the red imprint of my hand and I choked back a sob in regret, hiccoughing and coughing the tears as they ran down into my mouth and I wail in despair and regret. I knew I had gone too far and there was no taking it back.
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Then she returned a day later to get her things and I was so glad to see her that I hoped we could make up but she was so mean and distant that I became angry and lost my temper at her callous disregard for how sad I was without her, and finally we both lashed out unfairly calling up the terrible secrets had shared and used them one against the other, leaving unspeakable bleeding wounds and I could hardly breath at the cruelty unleashed, it was like the very air was on fire and to draw in a breath burned my lungs and my chest hurt from the inside as if my heart would burst from my ribcage. That is the day I knew I was lost and alone and she would not be coming back, not ever.
I broke down and cried uncontrollably, stuttering out my last words to her through the pain and recriminations and she tore herself from my desperate grasp, and staggered to stand and start to the door, injured internally like a tiny clockwork bird that is rusted and bent inside, she closes the door quietly and I hear her step down the stairs with her box of clothes and books and I lay on my stomach with my hands at my face, weeping miserably on our bed, my body shaking with the sobs, ruined and devastated and empty inside.
I walked around for months, tripping in the streets, unseeing, uncaring, the people laughing and working and talking around me seem to useless and trivial and their lives so meaningless and dead.
Nothing matters, nothing lasts, nothing’s real. Every day recedes into black and I hardly notice them passing.
Then, one day walking outside the city, at the top of a hill, on the horizon, in the distance, I see a movement and a light.
There’s a cool clear crystal silence, a frozen fire burning, and it draws me nearer to the flame. I see a dark and distant smile that reveals nothing more than a hooded cobra’s flat unblinking gaze.
She nears me, a woman dark and beautiful, and her cryptic smile moves me in a way I can’t describe. I felt at peace, as though something had moved in the universe and the planets were again aligned. I could feel a great weight lift from my heart and a light seemed to shine in my life. The dark veil over every waking day was gone, as if springtime had come in December. Something was in the air, I knew not what.
Then, through a friend, I heard she was in town and staying nearby. Did she want to see me? Would she see me if she knew I was here? What will she say, is she with someone else?
I’d die if I met her and she’s with someone, holding them like a lover, maybe even kissing them. I’d hide my face and bawl like a child and run away with my nose and eyes running, snot and tears down my face, stupid and ridiculous as a schoolgirl.
Deviously, I sat in a bistro where my spy told me she could be found that night. She would be with with friends, they said.
I would sit primly and feign innocence as I sipped my tea and waited for her to arrive, breathless in anticipation, afraid yet anxious for it to be over, one way or another.
Immediately, before I’m ready, I see her through the door, I can’t help but stare and her eyes meet mine and lock, but I can’t read her face, is she glad or annoyed or simply unmoved by my presence?
She calls my name gaily and holds me too tight, hurting me, but it’s good and I hug her back getting a mouth full of her fur-rimmed jacket as she hugs me to her chest and she kisses me full on the lips in front of her friends and her eyes are bright and brimming with tears and I know right away its ok and we’re together and she wants to be with me, all the violent stabbing attacks and mean-spirited unfairness used to hurt each other forgotten in an instant. Or at least put aside.
I remember only the good times as we drink with her friends, barely listening to their talk and caught when someone asks us a direct question, forcing us to break concentration and listen to their useless conversation, then we go back to our private world, looking at each other’s face, memorizing it again, holding each other by the elbows, my hands in her jacket holding her slight body and kissing the freckles on her nose, the ones I would chide her for when we spent a morning on the beach and she never tanned, she freckled prettily, like a fawn.
After they finally decide to go, we pair off, out the door we take each other’s hands, laughing, swinging our arms as we kiss and look again into our eyes, seeing each other as if for the first time and remembering all the light and fire rolling over us like water from a spring, cold and bracing and it wakes us to the possibility and we bubble up to the surface and gasp like fish stranded on the shore.
Laughing and remembering what made us fall in love that first time she saw my ruby red lips and the swell of my breasts and I saw the curve of her back and the fullness of her hips and her devilish eyes, we make plans unspoken and she puts her arm around my waist and mine around hers and we swing our arms wildly as we take mad giant steps, loping down the stairs and into the brick arched doorway to have something to drink and eat and talk until it’s too late to go anywhere else so we walk in the moonlight, not talking now, but just being together and squeezing her hand and she mine.
