March 15, 2010 - 7:50 p.m.
You may be straining to hear the robot sounds, from somewhere inside me.
You may be tempted to imagine the tinkering, clicking, but it is only my heart racing and banging against the inside of my chest, where imaginary hands have cupped it, close and closing their hold.
It is so hard to contain this,
this breaking up with you again, before we even had a chance to start again,
I started our conversation, numbed and ready to be cool with all this, hoping to feel nothing, expecting to get enough nothing from you to know what I should do with all the things I am feeling.
Without having to say it.
I started out fine.
I was lured into the comparison between you and fashion
the muse that inserts itself into every lesbian with eyes' imagination
you are part of a hundred stories, yarns woven and intersecting,
you fit
into the story of someone's future
so many people have been seduced by the idea of you in their tomorrow.
I wanted it too badly.
You taught me to be terrified of trusting those impulses, to project into a future that is always uncertain, but even more dangerous for someone who holds nothing back.
You were angry that I said, I saw this coming.
You could not see the parallel, or did, but the wrong one.
I'm not still stuck (at least for the moment) on the way you tried to end me, with the admission that you would put your hands and mind and mouth on another.
India, like some place on a map, stuck in some terrible, wet-cold small town, where she was more threatening and terrible in her smallness than any foreign place can seem to someone all alone in it.
Not her. New this time, but familiar. I told you I was relieved (a lie) that I had not torn my relationship apart to see where this one could go, could have gone (a lie), because now the seemingly, so far, strong and stable friendship that our secrets have left in tact is the only thing keeping me from ripping myself apart.
I torn strips from you because again, I felt like you could not hold out for me. Again, like you would not cheat, not like me, but would neither tell me what you wanted, or what I stood to lose by not moving fast enough.
I move from one thing to another, you said. I do not divide my attention. And all the while, your thoughts were rifting, I was trying to disentangle myself, and found, too late, that the line of sight, that I drew the first time I heard you talk about her,
now it is the direction, she the object, and I know what it feels like to lose you again.
I am not angry, except with myself, and with you for accepting all your own stupid rules about what you can and can't say. Because now I know that you will honour them, keeping us apart and making me wonder if I can put you away again without losing the connection to that feeling that somehow survived after everything. I don't know if you can break my heart again, or if I can bounce back. will we only repeat these same steps, over and over? I don't know if we can ever expect this sliding door to open, between us, so that you can take your heart out of your chest and I can reach in and touch it.
