This is the cycled dancing of the breath. No one can stop it’s moving, as new crescendos come and fade away. So newly finding love, it is already trembling to pass.
I’m not allowed to give him advice. When I do, it’s considered an insult.
(I am not a film major and I am not as professional as he is so I do not know what I am talking about.)
If it is something I know about, like Catholicism or Buddhism or writing, the entire topic is taboo. “Uh, we need to change the subject to something somebody cares about,” he laughs.
And we are both standing silently in the snow, two monoliths under the naked limbs, and we look past each other as we clutch our backpack straps and dart our eyes toward the other and away again.
Other people are allowed to give him tips and he is allowed to give tips to me, which I do not mind as long as he avoids the condescending tone he is prone to. He offers outsiders’ suggestions on how to do journalism and how to write stories. He offers outsiders’ suggestions on how to live my life. And that’s OK. That’s great. I think it’s great. I appreciate the help. I respect his suggestions. I mull them over and more often than not they are good.
But I am not allowed to say anything to him while he is working, because no matter how helpful I am trying to be, he won’t have it.
He and I love each other, sort of, but we’re not in love. It will never be the way I was with Matt, who I loved before, passionately and quickly like a flame.
And that’s OK. It’s absolutely OK. I don’t need us to be close, because we have an “open relationship.” I can go elsewhere for a sense of connection. On the surface it isn’t good, but it’s good. I care about him in spite of it all.
No, we aren’t close. Sometimes I feel like he wants to be. I can feel him trying to reach out, as I try to reach out, and somehow something gets in the way and we don’t connect. I say “I need a person to go to the gym with because I don’t have the motivation to go on my own. I need a gym buddy.” And he says, “so do I, but I can’t find anyone. You can’t find anyone either? That sucks, neither of us can find someone to go to the gym with.”
And that’s where we leave it. We both walk looking at our feet and we swallow as we shuffle over the melting ice on the sidewalk and it’s incredibly awkward so someone tries to change the subject.
“Oh, look at that building.”
Sorry, that building is incredibly boring.
(We’ve passed it every day we walked here for the last four months.)
“Yeah, that building. Oh.”
I will not make myself vulnerable and ask, because he could say no. He will not make himself vulnerable and ask, because I could say no. So we move on kicking grains of rock salt over the rough cement.
“You’re going to lunch? Oh, I’m going to lunch too. You’re going to that place for lunch? Oh, so am I. Well, I’ll see you after we get back from lunch.”
He’s going to Mexico for Spring Break with a friend, and his plans have shifted around but he knows he wants to go there, and I want to go somewhere too and I tell him I can’t find anybody to plan a trip with. But we are not going to do something together and no one wants to bring it up. That’s too vulnerable. I’m not one-hundred-percent-sure he wants me there and I will not request something if I’m not one-hundred-percent-sure he will say yes. And he will not ask either. It’s just the way he and I are.
It’s just the way we are.
So he will go to Mexico and I will stay in town and sleep with a lot of people to make myself feel better about not going anywhere. I am hurt and angry. And at the end of the week I will genuinely feel like I was productive and had a good time, because some of the guys I slept with were artists.
Oh, artists!
Now he and I shuffle down the sidewalk kicking rock salt, some of which has dissolved in the melting snow and crystallized after the wetness dried and the salt forms bright white water-rings on the dirty gray concrete.
You may not be PERFECT honey but you’re perfect, honey, you know I love you.
That’s the word. Love.
And that’s all I need.
Impermanence. The Universe is all about impermanence. Someday we will part no matter what. Even if we got married we would part when one of us dies and I might as well love him without needing him, without confusing parts of him with parts of myself. Realizing this has allowed me to become happier now than in any of my memories of love.
We are different. He and I are different. Transitory. Not quite perfect, but good. Today we are like awkward friends. Tomorrow, we will be strangers to each other.
He calls it “‘settling for OK,’ not ‘happiness.'” But I say “‘settling for OK’ is ‘happiness,'” because I disagree with the use of that first word, “to settle.” I don’t say I “settle for” what is, I say I “accept” what is. Because what is, well, is and I don’t see why I shouldn’t. We are just rolling through time, touching each other for a moment before we part. That’s what I call grace.
It’s just semantics.
(I call myself a writer and should know when something is just semantics.)
And I think it’s beautiful; I think we’re beautiful, he and I. We are walking over the sidewalks and the snow has melted and the ground is muddy and green things are beginning to poke out of it. He is tall and has big blue eyes and a wide face and I am an inch shorter and my brown hair contrasts my white skin and we contrast each other and it’s beautiful. We are different. We contrast. It’s beautiful.
Over the foothills comes the breath of spring, seeping moisture into dead things. Leaves are bursting out of the cracks, blooming, falling and bursting again. We are walking away from it all, towards the East. Yes, it’s beautiful.
I can see it in the creases in his face. He is stern, I am unwelcome. I love him, for now. His eyes are bright and blue. In them I can see the coming summer, autumn, fall, when our paths will eventually fork. Winter’s approach will wipe the slate clean and new things will emerge.
The ice has not yet melted here, and already the lingering clouds whisper omens of next year’s snow.