Writing on the Window

I'm determined to move us into the woods, so deep your lips chap and crumble like dry leaves on the forest floor. I promise I won't mind them on my cheek. Going home, that's what it will be like for me.

It was dark when the baby and I came home tonight. I sat in the truck with the radio loud, wishing you were here to open my door and shine the flashlight before my feet as I carried the baby into the house.

I'm sorry I don't miss you enough until you are gone for a couple of days.

I thought about country boys this evening. I sat down with a cold one and tried to remember the last time I popped the top on my own beer when you were around. I tried to remember the last time I changed the oil in my truck. I tried to remember the last time I replaced a fuse in the box.

It's hard to remember life pre-you.

There are nights I don't wake you, even though the loneliness within me holds strong like the hay bales we curled into the first night you took me in the barn. I know you want me to roll over, mash my palm against yours, but I let you sleep because you have to work in the morning, because I'm proud, because I like the way my leg twitches and my stomach lurches whenever I get sorry on myself.

'Am safe. Love you,' you sent through the phone tonight, when you used to write to me in the dirt on the backdoor window.

I'm determined to move us deep into the woods, so deep cell phones have no service, so deep that I can stand on the back porch with a cup of coffee and call you in, so deep you roll over and hold my leg still during the night.

Isolation

Sometimes he says things he thinks will keep me from withdrawing into the quiet.

It was my night, my friends, my interests.

I don't think he can handle me connecting with others.

We have a group.

Anyone outside of that group is threatening.

He says things.

Over burritos, he says he fears what is behind my pretty face.

It's not empowerment.

It's isolation.

Sandstone

Nothing could stand this much rain. The dust churned up in the fields today is stripped from the house. The rain seeps through holes in the gutter and pushes soil out of the hanging baskets. I should have been in bed hours ago but the screen door closes so softly when he's sound asleep.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "I wish I could paint her so as to interest others as much as she does me."

Day to day, it's easy to forget that I can't be smoothed. Only when I'm replete with time to ponder do I remember that life grits me like two pieces of sandstone struck against each other.

Midnight Fog

She's finally gone. I deadbolt the front door so she can't get back in. If my mother returns, I'll tell her I didn't hear the door. I was afraid. I was sleeping. I'll never tell her I was lonely.

I stand before my hazy bedroom mirror and check off my inventory: a Fuck the World poster; dead flowers in a dirty vase; and tiny strings of incense ash dangling off the bookshelf, dangerously hovering above thick red shag carpet. I unwrap the white towel, dingy and stained from the black dye fading out of my mohawk, and lie down on the bed. He always liked it when I got naked before I called.

"Hello?"

"Come see me tonight," I say into the phone.

"Crystal?"

"Come see me."

"Where are you?"

"Back at my mother's."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Anxiety awakens in my heart. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to know that I'll only have tonight, but I have to. I need a lump to rise in the back of my throat. I need a pain in my heart that draws up my stomach. I need to feel like I can never have him again. I lie to myself and say this will be the last time.

I go to the mirror. I want him to see me and ache. I pull my hair over my shoulders so the freshly shaven sides of my head are covered. I want to look innocent and helpless - at first. But even under the cover of hair, the rings in my nipples catch the light of the lamp. He'll have to use his imagination.

He'll stop at the park three blocks away. He'll trot down the sidewalk on the north side of the road where there are no streetlamps. He'll hold onto the latch on the gate, push the gate closed, then gently lower the latch, without raising sound or suspicion.

I hear a grunt below my bedroom window as he climbs on top of the iron railing and grabs his key. He slips open the door. The deadbolt locks behind him.

He doesn't say anything when he comes through my bedroom door. He slowly undresses, watching me, searching my face. I smile, and he climbs into bed.

Every midnight meeting with him is new now, despite the routine that brings us together. The moon reflects off his black hairless chest. I kiss it. He buries his nose in my hair, and I chew the end of a dreadlock.

He is so sweet when he cries. A hint of heartbroken-induced wrinkles curl around his eyes and white teeth gnash between beautiful full lips.

I wrap my arms around his body and feel for the long thin scars on his back, scars put there by me when I was young and selfless. My thumb brushes across the ripples and he grins through the tears, remembering that night at the park, in the backseat of the blue Lincoln, shadows of the trees dancing across my belly. Beautiful, white, perfect teeth in a grin I will never see again.

We don't have sex or make love just yet. We remember emotions. Every sour word ever passed between us lies in the bed. We toss it back and forth. What made those words slip over our tongues? What caused us to separate in anger? How could we so easily tuck away our relationship - this relationship - and pretend as though we could go on forever without each other?

When I was young and selfless, he used to pull me against his chest and surround me with his arms. I was helpless, completely dependent upon the steel cage he built around me. Tonight, I pull him to my chest. His breath fogs the metal rings in my nipples. He sobs. Without me, he says, life is lonely.

But I know he is just like me. Without me isn't lonely, just as without him isn't lonely. Finality hurts. Finality is a song you've heard but only remember two words of the lyrics. You can't explain what you remember clearly enough so another can help you find it again. That final kiss, the lips you know you'll never feel again, the wet pillowcase, the rush, the anger, the hate, the absolute goodness of being out of control are why you look for it again and again.

The newness of the first lingering kiss has worn off, and I know I'll never feel those emotions again until I convince myself it's the end.