And so we taste the seeds of sewn discontent. I was out with Matthew this evening. I saw Ryan off at the airport, he walked across the street like a traveler from the old world into the new. Goodbye to everything but a statue of liberty. I told his father that I felt as if we should have tattered his coat, but then thought that it was exactly right just the way it was. This gives me what I need as much as he always does. There was a bomb scare at Metrotown today. play the piano for me. I stood outside and looked up at the black towers, imagining orange billowing out, glass smashing into the sidewalk at my feet.
I left him, my Matthew, on the train almost after midnight. The presence of my thought, I could feel it beginning to sink into the skin of my heart. He left me, I left him. They’re words. I’m afraid a part of me will always be waiting. It’s a good fear, the flee-fight reaction that bolts me upright in unfamiliar beds. He stood in front of me and I looked a little closer. His hair is longer but the mannerisms are the same. He quotes instead of knowing how to speak. He tears my world apart. I was waiting for a miracle, and then the end days came. Before we began, it was timing that did us in. Timing and his youth holding so tenaciously to places that I haven’t seen in myself in years. It will take a long time to forget how to hurt, but as I’m sorry that there’s no simple things to say, I’m also wanting to be glad that I’m not as shallow as I sometimes suspect. This year has been good to me in perhaps that respect. I know that my motives are exactly as I perceive them to be. I’m young and think love is paramount, and I like it that way. There is a deathgrip on substance standing over illusion, and my version of romance savours simple facts and dedication. It’s as it should be, no matter how much pain it’s been giving me. Strawberries are what the young should live off, what we should carry closer. Bite the sun or you’re simply taking up space the rest of us could be using.
We eventually sat on the stairs of the courthouse, just like everyone else does here. It’s a place to have it out in privacy without taking the other person home. There’s darkness shrouding everything and yet enough light to see by drifting in from nearby buildings. There’s skyline to stare at, and water, and trees. Details that capture the eye and allow the conversation to wander. It’s important, that wander, that description into meta that creates an emotion check, that creates the proper distraction to bring things closer. Often what I said wasn’t much, but was hurtful. The truth is my weapon, it cuts like nothing else can. It was understood, the depth of my attack describes the enormity of my reaction. It’s not being volatile, it’s reining back what I want to do, what I want to say. There’s been too much waiting to find these things out, I can cry again. Forgiveness will come for some of the things, though likely never all of them. Deception is a big red button, the distrust bomb waiting to annihilate everything that went before. I go through my days deriving optimism from pragmatic descriptions of the present. It’s not positive, but it’s enough to live off. It’s enough that I can still put my arm in his to walk down the street. I can adjust.
I’ve said before that there are no heroes for me to follow now, but I want to say that I can draw figures on my soul instead. I can draw lines of respect and honour, I can steal voices that speak wisdom and inscribe lessons inside my body with them, I can learn and I can be holy and I can be more than the literary definition of the ghost inside deux ex machina. However, it’s going to take time. More time than has passed, for this wound shattered my sacred into dust. Against usual expectations, not mine, but I’m sure some of yours, more contact will help me. My anger is at betrayal, at falsehood, at taking me with him when he fell, when his wings were wrenched from his back by a picketing god. Grabbing the root by the stem is the first step to preparing a salve. My flight can be returned to me. My depression is action based, an ocean of reaction that I can eventually drink.
