I Almost Called You Today

But I did not.

I chose to sit on my hands.

This is more difficult than one would think.

I shared with my therapist today about grief.

Grieving you.

Still fucking grieving you.

That breaking up with the man I barely dated for six weeks only reopened the grief of having to step out of our relationship and the way it was.

Still sad.

Still miss you.

Still love you.

But not contacting you.

I know better.

I keep telling on myself.

And the grief, well, yes, it is there, but it is softer, gentler, not as ravishing and destroying as it was months ago.

Months ago.

It has been seven months since I have seen you.

I look for you every where.

I look at men jogging in the park, I know you are running, I know you wanted to run a marathon, I know you are out there.

I can sense you once in a while and I wonder if you are near and my heart breaks and my skin crawls and I feel you like an itch that is forever inescapably unable to be scratched.

I cannot get you out of my skin.

The full moon this week did not help.

The crow on the porch did not help!

The crow.

It caused me to cry today and to freeze in wonder.

A big therapy session about you, a big wondering about what am I holding onto.  What keeps me from seeing what there is to be seen, loving and being loved and being in the light of day.

Why do I not or why am I not in the world?

I mean I did try.

I tried so hard with the man I dated and all I could do was compare and despair.

I was not happy.

Although for a moment or two it was sweet, sweet to be out in the world, sweet to be seen, nice to hold hands in public.

But it never went beyond sweet for me, nice, ok, company.

It never went deep.

It did not touch what I had with you and I could not stop comparing.

I also could not make myself love him.

He loved me.

I broke his heart.

That hurts to write.

I was, in the end, not the woman I wanted to be.

He accused me of being cruel.

And I won’t deny that, I am not one to tell another how they feel, he feels that, his experience.

However.

It would have been more cruel to continue dating someone who was in love with me when I was not with them.

More cruel by far.

There are things I did not have the chance to say and probably will never have the chance to say and I was messy and I don’t like being messy.

And there was pain.

Pain to recognize I had a part in and pain to see that despite wanting something to work, it wasn’t going to work.

Pain.

But I don’t have to suffer.

No.

And I could.

I could be suffering.

That crow though.

Sigh.

That crow.

Crows.

As you well know, remind me of you.

I have a metal heart box with a passel of cards with different versions of crows that I have bought to send you love notes.

I’m not allowed to though.

My motives are shit so I don’t write those cards anymore, I don’t send them to you anymore.

I wanted to call today so bad.

I wanted to text.

I wanted to see you, smell you, touch you, be with you.

The blue sky called me.

I felt you.

A pull, a fierceness to it, my eyes, pulled upward into the sky, my heart in my throat.

At work today, thinking about you after my therapy session, wondering what it serves to think about you, that faint knife of pain cutting into my heart when I think of not being able to be with you and how I still long for it, the being with you.

And I entertained the thought of texting you.

Just a text.

Just to find out.

Just to say I love you still and if things change with you, please let me know.

All the different iteration of I’m still in love with you and why won’t you be with me?

Sigh.

I made myself do homework instead of texting.

Like now, blogging when I wanted to call.

I did my homework, sitting at the island counter in the kitchen at work.

The whole house filled with light and sky.

My employer’s house has a gigantic fourteen foot, possibly higher now that I’m thinking about it, cathedral ceiling and the back wall is all glass, an impossibly large window facing out into the breathtaking down town of San Francisco, all blue skies today and clarity like sharp cut diamonds.  The weather today was so extraordinary, the door to the deck wide open, all the way.  The window is actually a panel of sliding glass doors, it was as if the whole back of the house was opened to the sky.  An enormous sky light exposed to the world.

The dishwasher beeped its’ ending and I pushed away from my homework, the moment I did, thoughts of you back in my head, back under my skin, back in my heart.

I walked to the dishwasher, I felt someone watching me.

I looked out, and there.

There.

So close I could see his bright inquisitive eye staring at me.

A crow.

Perched there on the balcony ledge watching me.

My breath caught in my throat and tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks.

Only I, my dear, will cry with longing looking at a crow.

Minutes of sustained eye contact.

My heart crashing in my chest.

Then.

He gently opened his wings and flew away.

Taking my heart with him.

I almost called you right then.

Almost.

I can still hear the conversation I was having with you in my head.

Telling you about the crow.

Telling you everything it meant.

Telling you I still talk to the moon.

Telling you that I know you found out that I was dating someone.

Telling you I am not any more.

Telling you all the things.

And breaking my heart once again.

So.

Now.

Here.

I opt out.

I am not calling you.

I am not texting you.

I am turning away from that tale.

You have something to share.

You have something to tell me.

 

You call me.

 

Je t’ai Dans la Peau

 

My tattoo is but days old.

Did you realize, my love, my sweet—

My heart.

(you have flown off with it yet again)

That when you spoke to me of me,

My impact on you.

My love for you.

 

My effect on your life–

 

You spoke to me in the

PAST TENSE.

Not in the present.

Not in the future.

All in the past.

 

Le passe compose

 

My least favorite tense in French, darling.

Post haste my love.

Post box full of love notes for you.

Photos of you in my phone.

My God you are gaunt.

The weight you have lost running.

Running away from us.

Running away from me.

Running away from yourself.

 

Running down to the sea,

Bare headed before the moon.

On your knees in the sand.

Sobbing.

I heard you there, your cries echoed in my bones.

I wept with you.

 

But not near you.

 

Tous les jours

Je fait l’amour.

Tous les jours.

 

All my wants/hope/dreams

All in the imperfect past.

 

Thus, am I to embody this grief.

My back crawls with it, the itch of sorrow.

Keening again as the crow flies.

You.

 

&

 

Me.

 

Bunny.

 

Out on a limb flowered with pain

Petals of sorrow,

Whisper soft sweet

Scratched on to my back

 

 

My back, my back, flat on my back

Holding my breath waiting for it to end.

Feeling the cold  tile pressed pattern of squares

Ground into the small of my back.

 

 

I was so cold, it was so, so cold.

Like.

Sugar drowned in milk.

 

And then.

All the waiting.

The waiting for you.

All those years.

All those decades.

I danced down so many roads,

Waiting for you.

 

And now.

This journey of a thousand miles,

This journey of a thousand tears—

Leaves me with nothing to do but wipe the blood from my back.

Wipe the tears from my face

(In every flower I see your face)

Stand up, stand back.

Rise anew.

Crafted in the cloak of my being.

Ever present.

Ever perfect.

Ever here.

Croaked the crow.

Ever more.

My love.

Never more, my love.

Yet.

Ever yours, my love.

All The Things

I want to do with you.

There’s so many.

The list, my dear, may become quite big.

But I can’t stop thinking about them.

The things I want to do with you.

An unexpected one that came up tonight.

I want to have a cat with you.

OH my God.

A sweet little kitten, I haven’t thought about having a cat in a while.

I miss having them.

There are cat people and there are not cat people.

And you are a cat person.

I knew this, some part of me knew this, but I didn’t know.

The thought of a baby kitten and you, oh holy mother of god, it makes me tremble.

Like what could possibly be better?

Being in bed with you and a tiny furry creature, I might weep with joy at the thought.

Which is so much better than the weeping I have been doing of late.

I am so, so, so tired of the crying.

It comes and goes now, on its own accord, of its own life, taking me when it wants to without my permission.

My employer was playing music today and some song came on that reminded me of you and I literally bent over double and started to cry.

It’s as close to crying in front of my boss as I have gotten.

It’s been a week of this, I have cried plenty at work, oh my god, so much, but usually when no one is around, when I have had private times, when the baby has fallen asleep on me and I’m in a room by myself whilst the rest of the world goes careening on.

The world does not stop despite my heart-broken heart.

I seem to have stopped sometimes, most times, a glazing around me, a soft focus phased out, fuzzed out, sensory turn down where I am muddled and disoriented.

Driving in the rain tonight, coming home, listening to Debussy and thinking of you and the streets slick shined with rain and light reflections, the traffic, and the black inky night, here and there moments of coming to almost, as though I had just driven the last mile without really seeing anything.

It’s probably not a good thing to disassociate while driving.

Some music I can’t listen to right now.

And while the classical can make me feel tremendously sad, oh man, there are some things I can’t listen to at all, just avoiding certain songs and playlists and when I do stumble into them getting out as fast as I can.

But I did not start this blog to be sad.

No.

I wanted to list all the things I want to do with you.

All the things I think about, what would this be like, how would it feel?

And I know.

That’s fantasy.

But I think my poor heart just needs a reprieve, a momentary respite from the sad, so be gentle with me whilst I play out my fantasy.

Falling asleep in a hammock with you.

God.

I just want to be somewhere warm with you, wrapped up around you, holding you, being held by you.

You and the sun, I so want to be out in the world, in the light, basking with you, warm and brown and golden and laughing.

And sleeping.

Sleeping in warm sunny places, sleeping on a boat whiling its way through the Loire Valley, cushioned on your chest, my eyes closing to the rise and fall of your chest, the sky floating by, resting on you.

I feel so adrift right now, unmoored and up anchored.

I just wish to be settled against you again, skin to skin, heart to heart.

I want to go to the movies with you, hold hands in the dark, lean my head on your shoulder.

I want to travel with you.

God damn it.

What a pair we would make, poking fun at incongruously dressed travelers, sitting next to you on a plane, head on your shoulder.

I’ll happily take the middle seat so you can sit on the aisle.

I want to read books to you, leisurely, one chapter at a time, fairy tales, novels, poetry.

I have read you a lot of my poetry, but there is so much out there, so much yet to be read.

I have so much more to write.

Don’t you want to hear my poems?

I want to linger over breakfast and drink coffee with you and make bad jokes and be silly and go right back to bed.

Not to sleep, no, although that may come in time.

I want to write you love notes and stick them in your jacket pocket when you are not looking, so that when you are at work, you find them and smile and think of me.

I want to walk through Paris with you, sit in the cafes, hold your hand, make out at a corner table and not care who goes by, it’s Paris, people make out in cafes.

I want to go to farmer’s markets with you and carrying a basket on my arm.

I want to go clothes shopping with you.

I want to try on dresses for you and I want you to try on clothes too and then I want to be scolded by the sales lady for smuggling you into the dressing room.

I want a life with you that goes places and does things and opens me up to wonder and awe and beauty and surprise.

I suppose these things are not fair to ask or to write about.

I hesitated to even write all these things down, but the words in my head wouldn’t leave me be and though I am now once again in tears, just the moment of thinking about you holding me in a hammock might be just enough to get me through the tears that are once again streaking my face.

Oh my poor tired heart.

Go to bed.

May sleep come, just so I can dream once more of you.