By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.”-Dorothy Parker
I am laying in my bed at a usual time after midnight, doing my usual, uninvited after midnight self examination, when that song fills my ears. The song, a tune I would have otherwise have disliked had it not circumstantially been placed at a particular moment. It now is the only way I can accurately recall the situation with emotion and the exact feeling I had. So here is another one of my 2 Am raving/reminiscence/only time I can write anymore passages.
I remember lazily swinging back and forth,upon our backs, side by side idly looking at the sunset kissed backyard party only because it was there before us. We were impervious to the ruckus surrounding us, the babbling of the party goers a mere hum. The faded dingy flowers that adorned the fabric of the backyard swing you described- they were native to Arizona. You spoke wistfully, telling me their true color (which I do not remember), and how they were ten times as beautiful in real life. I listened drowsily, happy to hear you reminisce. I leaned over to meet the sandy red dirt with my finger, penning your name on the surface. Your leaned over me and composed mine, to look like my handwriting as I had replicated yours.
My heart aches and presses with longing to return to that window of time. Before the immense pain we inflicted on each other. If I could take it all away and return to then, I could live beside you with one hand intertwined in yours, the other in your hair, swinging a slow pendulum.
Now I know that when ever i need to remember, I listen to the song was playing on the radio when we traced our names. Just to hear the slightly higher pitched voice of a you 3 years ago tell me about your mother and Arizona Flowers.
My bare feet pound the dark burning concrete and the street stretches on long and painful. My eyes find the line in between clarity and where the ground swims rippling with heat, fueled only by greed and lust for the road, I am driven onward. I know my choices and I know deeply my passions and the bitter truth that they do not mix. I cannot possibly have my cake and eat it too, the philosophy that has always withstood the test of time, looms ever apparent in this situation. I know I cannot have one with the other, but am well aware that venomous unhappiness follows both paths. Instead of brooding- at which I am so naturally talented, I push forward down the road, conquering only my physicality of which is trite.
I have accumulated no enlightenment nor arrived at any decision.
The tall grass, prematurely yellowed in the sudden but most expected Oklahoma heatwave is riddled with invisible cicadas enveloping my senses. The wind does here does not merely blow through the stalks, it hiccups and tufts of cotton drift lazily by most likely serving as fortuitous transportation to thousands of tiny yellow white summer gnats that bounce up and down like tiny molecules before my eyes and surrounding my body.
And true, it may seem like a stretch
But it’s thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you’re away
When I am missing you to death
They will see us waving from such great heights
“Come down now,” they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
“Come down now,” but we’ll stay . . .
