Today is the anniversary of the day I was hit by a truck seven years ago. It threw me thirty feet, peeling the skin from my knees like red fruit, shifting my bones, and tearing my silk skirt and shoulder like they were made from the same tissue. My hips were no longer a cradle, but a crooked cup, dropped and badly repaired. My right arm wouldn’t follow commands.
Your heart, it tastes like something I used to remember. Words restarted, strange memories, reverb, a breath of fresh air, and shift. (Standing in a room torn down years ago, shouting at a man who will no longer talk to me, never see, don’t mention, “I never said it would be easy to be with me.” If I could have seen the future, I would have walked out then, every step away a commitment to a better tomorrow.) We sit in your vehicle outside my building, the third night in a row, dark, midnight warm, a scene from a movie we’re writing with all the verve of a massacre, interpreting the strings, showing our scissors, oxytocin gleam, sharpening knives, as close as the moment at New Year’s Eve when we kissed under confetti and flashing lights. A change, the weather, our sea, research material, a history beginning to mingle, to be.
Between my arms, pride, peroxide corrosive, sincere and loaded as a gun. Lying on the couch, discussing humanities, a button floats to the top, ready to be pushed. He stiffens, ambiguity banished, a familiar motif, easier for me to get to than him for me, a center of Rowan tree, witch tree, anger, dense and thick with power, almost spitting his words as, counter-intuitive, I relax, comfortable with the coda, the moment, hatred matched with an alpha sympathy. We both have this. It is a gift, as well as a curse. Us as graphic motif, living, crackling towers of fury, hands raised, ground shaking, pulling down a storm. He apologised, though it was unnecessary, an instinct ground deep, appreciated as part of a medley, a comfort carved from context, clever and adored. Though you make me afraid, I wanted to say, it does not stem from this, but how much I want to live in your heart.