Bits and pieces.
I have not been here in a while.
And while that is not exactly true, I am here quite often, I have not written in a while.
Oh.
A poem every now and then.
I have one niggling at the back of my brain that I should have written on Friday afternoon when it struck me but I couldn’t quite get myself to sit down and do it.
So.
I find myself here, at the keyboard, writing and thinking and sometimes, oh, sometimes, dreaming.
Thinking about you and where you’re at and how is the pandemic treating you, things like that.
Or.
Do you ever walk past my apartment, slow, longingly, thinking about ringing the buzzer.
It happens once in a while.
Someone will buzz my door and I think it’s you, but it’s the wrong time of night or I am in a session with a client and cannot answer.
I do go and look.
But if it was you, well, you are long gone.
Other times I think, you drive by, you must, not that often, but often enough.
Do you see the lights on?
Do you look for the Marilyn Monroe print high up on the wall, the one you can see from the street through the top fo my window where there is not a blind, or maybe the top of the David Bowie book up on the ledge-the one you surprised me with, that you bought at Dog Eared Books in the Castro.
Do you?
I think you do.
But what do I know?
Not a lot it seems.
Even though I keep myself busy with all the things.
School, work, school, work, recovery, repeat.
Week after week.
And thoughts of you.
Urges to be seen by you, drive by and see me out for a walk around Jefferson Square Park, too far off your route even where you in my neighborhood.
Or.
Since the weather has changed, not much, but enough to drive people to the park to catch the sun before the inevitable fogs rolls right back in, see me sitting on a bench in Octavia Green reading a book and sipping a sugar free strawberry soda through a green and white striped straw in a Mason glass jar with a handle; the only drinking jar left in the group I bought aeons ago.
Every time I go to Octavia Green, I think, maybe today he will see me.
Stop.
Park the car.
Get out and walk to me.
Surprise me.
Face full of sun and hope.
Despite myself and all the years.
Four years now that I have had you in my heart, if not always present, no not always present, so not here, just there, over there, on the other side of a hill, watching the moon rise and set from a different part of the city.
Sometimes the moon annoys me.
Stop reminding me of him.
Go away now.
Leave me be.
And yet it goes on doing what moons do.
Wax.
Wane.
Repeat.
Ah.
I digress.
See.
I get lost, in the dreams and hopes, the fantasy and revery.
The longing, sigh, still in my heart a dark romantic thinking up poetry to write about you.
That hit me today.
The fact that the only poem you ever recited and recorded for me, a Pablo Neruda that wrecks me, that I can’t find the damn recording.
I thought I had it in a file with your name on it.
Messages and photos and emails.
But it’s not there.
And I remember the book of poetry I gave you on Christmas Eve last year and how you said, “we should read these to each other.”
Fuck my wayward heart.
Why today?
Why did that little bon mot pop into my head?
You’ve been on my mind.
When aren’t you I suppose.
But more so now than you have in months.
It’s been eight months since I saw you last.
Seven’ish months since your last text.
I was mad at you.
Told you to leave me alone until you figured it out.
Seems you haven’t.
Figured it out.
That’s what I tell myself.
He’s figuring it out.
Gah.
Even to myself that sounds asinine.
Yet.
Hope.
She springs eternal.
Fuck you hope.
I did something yesterday.
It felt feral and impulsive.
And I did not stop myself.
At first.
I did later.
I pulled a card from the metal heart on my desk that I bought for you over a year ago and wrote tu me manques.
“I miss you” in French.
I signed it.
Sealed it.
Wrote your address on it.
Stamped it.
With, oh apropos, the LOVE stamp.
Flipped it over and stuck a crow sticker with a rose in its mouth to the back of the envelope flap.
And then looked at it.
Propped it up on my computer.
What the fuck am I doing?
It was a little like the other night when I held my finger hovering over your private Instagram account.
I almost hit request.
I did not.
But fuck.
It was close.
The card was like that.
I asked God for a sign.
I know God doesn’t work like that.
Not usually.
I threw it in my bag and went to lunch with a friend.
I had coffee and told that friend what was in my bag.
I sat in the park.
I texted another friend and told on myself.
Although to be frank, honest, virtuous, vigorous with my truth, I knew the latter friend would cosign the card.
He thinks we should be together.
“He’s the love of your life, figure it out!”
He didn’t coax me to mail it or not mail it.
He did ask me if it was a love letter.
Sort of.
I walk around with it in my bag longer.
I waited for the sign that never came.
I walked past the German restaurant on the corner and put it in the mailbox.
I woke up this morning and thought to myself.
What that fuck did I do?
It’s Sunday, can I get it back?
And.
You know.
I don’t want it back.
I just want you back.
Same as fucking ever.
Sigh.
My heart.
I miss you.
Je te veux.
Tous les jours.
I probably always will.
I tried to run the numbers in my head.
How many days till the card reaches his PO box?
I mailed it late afternoon yesterday, a Saturday, which means it’s still in the mailbox on the corner, as it’s Sunday.
It will get picked up tomorrow.
Process Tuesday.
Maybe land in your PO box on Wednesday.
Maybe.
But the thing is.
Though I used to mail you things weekly.
I haven’t for eight months.
Maybe longer?
Do you even check the mail there anymore?
I wanted to send you a chip on your anniversary.
I didn’t.
I wanted to send you a birthday card on your birthday.
I didn’t.
I wanted to let you know when I landed in the ER.
But I couldn’t.
No other sound is quite the same as your name
Good grief.
I should stop listening to music, I get smacked with the sads sometimes.
Anyway.
I really tried to not reach out.
I deleted your number in my phone.
I don’t email you.
But I come close.
I thought.
I just have to make it through my dissertation defense.
I just need to heal from my next surgery in October.
And how long.
How long before you figure it out?
Or I do.
“Why can’t you be with him?” My friend asked.
I told him all the things and he just sighed, “I don’t like how this movie ends, you’re supposed to be together.”
You would think that.
I have only had one soul mate.
You.
I have only really loved one man.
You.
But sometimes you don’t get to be with the one you love.
I’ve read a lot of books, that seems to happen an awful, awful, awful lot.
It’s only in movies, spun sugar fairy tales, that we end up together.
And I swear we were our own little movie, the romance of it all was horrendous.
Heartbreaking.
And so delicious.
I remember one of the last things you said to me about Sabrina and Nick.
“That’s us.”
And I freaked out.
“They die at the end and get to be together in the afterlife! Is that how I get to be with you, when we’re dead?!”
I think I hung up the phone on you.
I was devastated.
But once in a while, I think, what if you meant what the characters said to each other.
“We’re end game.”
Is that what you meant?
That somehow we end up together, in the end?
I sure hope so.
I suppose I shouldn’t have wrote the card.
Had some fucking restraint.
But I didn’t.
Maybe I’ll regret it.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Maybe I’ll regret writing another sad lonely hearts club blog about a man who is just there, over the hill, but not here where my heart beats still with longing and thoughts of what if, oh what if?
Sometimes I think that maybe it’s just this down time.
This little whiff of time after turning in my dissertation to my committee, this little jot of time before I have my final push to finish my PhD.
Maybe I’ve had a little more time than usual.
And the grief it sank in and got me again.
I suppose I shouldn’t take actions out of sorrow.
But that wouldn’t be very poetic.
Now would it?
The deed is done and I can’t take it back.
You’ve got mail.
Auntiebubba 