and now there is this--
uncommon ground between us
making sense
of your silent hands.
uncommon ground between us
stretches. the cracked earth
of your silent hands
folded on the table in front of you
stretches the cracked earth
in my quiet voice--
folded on the table in front of you,
of me saying to you, "you didn't."
in my quiet voice,
making sense
of me saying to you, "you didn't--
and now there is this."
He walks through the mud, and it hardens in the sun, they bake like clams and cats in the heat. And he wonders -- how can sunshine feel so cold?
He is always wary of sunshine, now.
It burns him, you see.
they find nothing in the waves, you see,
and nothing beneath the sea,
and nothing within their silences
makes any sense,
and it still burns
He cannot look at the floor, it shifts and moves under his gaze, like the waves. He cannot look at the sky, it shines far too brightly. He cannot look anywhere, so he closes his eyes. This feels silly, he thinks. The blackness does not shut out anything else. It burns him.
Everything burns.
The mud, it is stirred, and they stand there, in his memory, and don't look at each other, and it is in the spaces between them, the silences, where everything important isn't said.
the spaces
they don't fill up
and he might want them to
so he pours himself out, in his mind.
He says nothing, and, like always, stays away. It is safer, here.
You see.
I mean, you read about them, all their "the silence between them thickened into some impenatrable wall," and you think, that's bullshit, you would just SAY SOMETHING about it-- speak some kind of truth-- and that would be the end of it.
But you're wrong.
Maybe you would say something. Maybe you'd squirm and struggle to draw breath in the oppressive air until you couldn't stand it anymore, and you'd say, "there is this silence say something goddammit," and it doesn't do anything but draw the other person's glare, that you still can't see through.
It is IMPOSSIBLE.
Some things are impossible.
It has taken me years to admit that.
And it hurts too much.
He feels the handle, cold and clear, and knows it not. He knows not the door sitting before him; he has eyes only for the lover whose gaze is on his back, and whose face he cannot see. Will not see. Mustn't see.
He will not turn around, or he will never leave.
This is not what he wants, part of him screams, and tries to take hold of his hand, to move it away from the gateway into nothing, and back to the body that once possessed him. If he could have just one more day to make it right--
But it will never be right, he whispers to the air, and the atmosphere replies in its sadness. They were something special, he knows, but this cannot go on.
He will not let it go on.
His lover is sculpted by his touch, and marbled by the waiting game they play. He waits for a sign, a measure of peace, or a flight away, but finds nothing but the door that was there before.
It has always been there, he thinks, and cannot seem to go.
He feels the smell of his lover again, and fights the urge to turn around. The landscape behind him is behind him. The landscape in front of him is all beyond the door.
The handle is stuck, and his hand rests uncertainly upon the top, desperate to hold on, frantic to let go.
And so he cannot move, and they are painted into a picture of unhappiness, no will to stay or go. It cannot happen again, he thinks, but still, the handle does not move. He wills the air to move him, to blow him somewhere beyond, behind, beneath or above this place of--
And so they are painted once again.
His lover's eyes are sad, and his eyes are sadder.
But, for all the love and hate amongst them, the scene does not falter.
They were sitting outside. He is now sitting alone.
The pause stretches out, swollen and sickly, between them, and the sunshine filters down into it and heats it from within. And he thinks about how if there was any way to fix this silence, perhaps gather up the photos, put them back in their albums, unpack the past and relive it again, that he wants to do so, desperately.
He wonders if his lover does as well, and the fact that he isn't sure says it all, and more.
And so the pause grows, and swells some more, and he can feel it, pressing onto his skin, gluing him to his seat. So he starts again, akwardly, to try and heal the gap, mend the words, force the dawn to come again, even as the silence forces his lover back into the house.
Into the house. Away from the sunshine they've been stealing warmth from, away from the ocean and the waves and the days they share.
That last morning, he thinks about how his lover started, "Listen," and then gasped, floundering under the sea, for nothing more to say. And he searched his mind for a preserver, for a way to tether themselves to the shore, and when he came up empty-handed his heart broke all over again, and he could do nothing but stare.
Nothing more to say meant all of it was just a memory, and it hurts him to know.
Fights can be fixed, hearts can be mended, he knew it, he wanted to believe it, and if there is a way to do it, he would jump at the chance. But he went back into the house, and there is no way to bridge the gap between them anymore.
And so the pause grows into something more.
He thinks about how he's really gone.
He thinks about the poetic language that doesn't mean anything but 'he's gone'.
And he sighs.
Side by side they sat, waiting silent, sifting
through the ashes of familiarity. They watch
the sun burn on the horizon of rolling tides
and it seems wrong that this scene-- this afterwards
should be a memory-- a picture
when love is not a memory
when intimacy is not a memory
when forever is not a memory.
They watch, waiting silent. He speaks.
There was never a time that this wasn't the most important thing, think
about all the different beginnings. They all commenced with one
or the other of us
saying or doing something
without hesitation.
He turns and goes into the house, and the figure
sitting, waiting silent, as the sun burns and bitches
on the horizon of rolling tides, doesn't really remember
any of that.
All he remembers is this. As the sun
fizzles and the ash scatters, a new tide comes
and this becomes only a souvenir of that
distant places
foreign names
and he turns and goes into the house.
There is nothing safe, nothing easy.
There is no sound in the guest bedroom. There are thick blankets folded on the chest of drawers and starched pillows beside them, waiting to be used or not used by the man whose tension-tight hands brought them here, who sits now across from them on the edge of the bed, staring unseeing. Dust curls around the room, minutely bothered but inevitable, in the way of stuttered breathing in a silent, silent room.
He shuts his eyes to the empty, but it grows into something more. It was just a memory.
And now, there is nothing.
When he realizes that they were never really lovers, it makes him choke, unable to breath or move.
They were never really lovers, and now he knows it. And all those memories that seemed precious, that seemed pure somehow, hold no weight, so he looks at them once more, and throws them away.
They were not lovers.
He cannot breath.
They did the things that lovers do; the long looks, and the kind words, and the soft smiles. And more, as well -- they shared a bed, and groaned together, and came together, and laughed at the dinner table when someone mentioned how flush they were.
They shared vacations, and a bed, night after night, but they were never lovers.
He feels betrayed, somehow.
Each time that face comes up in his mind, he has to remember, yet again, that he was never in love. He said the words, and they were hollow, and worlds away from being the truth. If they were true, they wouldn't have said them routinely, each morning and every night, just to feel them in the air.
This is disallusionment, he thinks. And it is not fun.
They were never lovers. And that hurts more than anything else did.
There is an ending, in this faded photograph and these faded jeans and his pair of faded eyes. There is a calm, dropped on the two of them by time and logic and the things inside that know, instinctively, when to shut up and when to die.
There is a tear, dripping off the end of his nose, because he knows that, deep down, he'll always miss that voice. There is a pang, when he thinks of him, even though it's been long enough to merit keeping the pretense of 'over-him'.
There are phases, cycles, that bump rhythmically up and down. The thoughts come and go, and continue their little paths to whatever destination they can see but he can't. The only destination any thinking ever gets to, it seems, is fading.
Like a less-than-familiar blip on the horizon. He packs the photos back up, for another year. He puts the sunshine back in it's box, next to the sand and the beach and the lover he still misses, after all this time.
But there is an ending in this, less that satisfactory, but more than friends.
They'll always be more than friends.
listen
the sky falls daily, there aren't
always bridges to the places
we can't imagine
being without.