With only minor falsifications.



The door was cracked. When I came in, no-one answered and I surmised by the roaring of a blow-drier that she'd just finished with a shower. A moment later she appeared in a robe.

I helped her get ready, inasmuch as I stood around crossing my arms in various ways while she frantically brushed teeth and hair, threw clothes around, talked on the phone, and generally ran around in a forgetful haze. I watched on with a sense of weary futility while she disappeared to the basement, reappeared with a hamper. I helped fold a few clothes. I looked at her pictures and books and paintings for the hundredth time. She called to me from the bathroom.

"Where'd you go?"

"i haven't moved."

Not strictly true by the time I replied; I had come around the corner to see what she wanted. She had a handful of hair in one hand, running a brush underneath it with the other. This process extended carefully to the sides and front while she looked at me. The eyes, as usual, foretold everything and nothing. "I don't like there to be any lumps," she said. "In my hair."

She smiled slightly, turning her head away after the unnecessary clarification. I wandered off again over the creaky floor, still too unsure of her motivations. How many months has this been the case? Time to talk has become ridiculously scant, so I had already written several lengthy letters, one of which was practically still wet with ink and was currently burning a hole in my pocket, having been composed over the course of the previous night and current morning. But our being together and talking, however meagerly, made me feel less harsh in my isolation, and those bold complaints and presumptions made in the weary hours before now seemed petty and inappropriate, so I could not make up my mind to give it. She would be leaving in a matter of minutes, while I pondered.

"Hey, can you help me for a minute?" This time from her room. When I appeared in the doorway she was bent over stuffing another bag. The limits of her short pink robe rode nearly up to where leg became ass. As she stood up I saw most of a breast as it almost fell out past a fuzzy lapel. She pushed the bag toward me.

"Put that in my car, please."

The cruel woman, she nearly closed the door in my face, but that was surely the only way to sever the gaze that determined to memorize every detail as she moved. My mind continued to pretend it could see her dressing, and a moment later I realized I was blankly staring at the door which had, in the meantime, basically become a sexual object by proxy.

When I came back from the car she was dressed in several layers and buzzing around the house again, barely affording me a glance. Still, I desperately wanted to devour her, a persistent fact which I've had to mull over at length since she left. _____ may be the first person to have that power over me, though I can't decide if it's intrinsic to her or something she has cultivated to promote my destruction. Certainly the latter notion has held its suspicious sway over me in recent weeks -- but on the more realistic side of things, I suspect that the moments of nigh-profound intimacy we've shared, succeeded by increasing periods of distance and interactions that, when they happen at all, are ambiguous and difficult, have fostered a kind of dependence in me which has become ugly and awful in its urgency. I should have kept the letter, for that matter. The emotionally paranoid retrogressive displays of a grown man-child have no place in relationships, even if they are in the midst of an elaborate ending. But why shouldn't she know such truth, even if it's only true come from the pen of 24 hours sleepless over cup of coffee? Intimate impulses seem so painfully paradoxical, wanting to give everything while protecting their source. I have experienced in recent days such a serious weakness and self doubt, only to be suddenly sure that it doesn't matter, I can say whatever should arise in me, and besides, who taught us shame of this phrase, I need to be near you? How have I become master of second-guessing the most easily understood impulse of all? I hazard a guess that the answer to this, or the question itself, would have some bearing on the greater question of the Work.

Nevertheless, none of this conjecture had allowance to intrude on our afternoon. She had stayed up late dancing again, and today early work with little sleep and no preparation for her travel left her in a tightly wound condition. I suppose this stress was behind her keeping me around and betraying even the slightest need.

Quickly, around corners with curb-checks and all four cylinders firing my old Honda up the next hill.

Idle moments, her freaked-out sucking down a cigarette. Some large lady with sagging flesh called out from a third floor window above us, you'll have to move the car, there's public parking across the street. This is private parking.

When it came time to leave, she threw herself against me, all laden with bags so that I could manage no useful embrace. The bus roared next to us. She made several more or less pointless statements in lieu of a hopeful goodbye, and thanked me without much basis.

"I'll call you."

I doubted it. I grabbed her firmly under the upper arm, ready to show her as much in a kiss as I have elaborated here, but I decided against it. My hand awkwardly fell and then tried to rub fitfully at her neck, but could find no place to rest.

Sometimes, 'Have a nice day' probably means more than anything else we could come up with, and that's what she said as she walked away. I sent her with the letter and spent the rest of the night regretting it. At least I had swallowed some pride though -- I did not try to kiss her. What would the body care for this saving of face and nonsense assumption of dignity? The letter came from my body, thousands of words to say what a body would on its own in an unhindered instant.

Now that she's gone for a few days, I have plenty of time to safely ruminate. Having rested, I feel much more still already. Surely _____ has no real power over me, for I am a man complete, but it will be pertinent to pray for the continuation of that completion always, as I go about contemplating the worth of the woman who has brought mind-body dichotomy into such powerful appearances.