"The Unquiet Heart"

It’s cold and wet here, but then it’s always cold and damp in this place where love is a barren dream. When love comes with an x factor that is immutable and intangible; and yet, still impacts everything it touches. You were a sweet dream that blew in on a storm, churning the emotional waters of a still lake that bled depth into the choppy sea, breathing life and passion into me. Why then do I still feel the wake of your passing now that you are long gone? Maybe it’s a desperate plea for you to return. A vain hope, that is a cruel mistress, who taunts me, making me believe that someday I’ll open the door and find you there waiting. Waiting with that patient half smile you always watched me with; I was a lab animal and you were my beautiful scientist cataloguing my habits.

You were always the free spirit, laughing in the wind and chasing the madness with a smile. The world came alive around you and sent tendrils into everyone you met. You walked into a room, and sent out sparks that charged the skin, and sought out life with a fervor itching to be consumed. The air fairly crackled around you and that passion pierced the shadows around my heart.

I felt it that first moment my eyes swept across yours in a sea of people. The hot sticky Georgia summer pulsed around us, thick as soup that lay heavy in our lungs as we breathed in the night air. There was a magnetism that drew me to you; and in an unaccustomed moment of abandon, I asked you to dance. You laughed, tipping your head back and the throaty noise slipped around me, ensnaring me.

“You’re cute sugar,” You replied with your husky voice that felt like scotch burning its way into my belly and leaving a smoldering fire of yearning in its wake. “I don’t dance.”

And then you sauntered off, giving me a careless wink as you left. My world came crashing down around me that night. That one wink and I knew I had to possess you. Knew you had to be mine; but it was you who possessed me, you who claimed me, and I was lost in a sea of want.

I was a knave. I knew nothing of love, nothing of that soul stirring passion that turns you into a mad thing possessed and tormented by demons. I used to argue that love was a myth. An imaginary land created in our youth that crumbled under the onslaught of time. I never could understand my peers launching into wailing epitaphs over a lost love, only to recover the next weekend and be back together, or find someone new. This constant newness, the ever changing landscape of love landing on unsuspecting bystanders, seemed insane.

It was my first lover, I argued with over this very detail. The very nature of desire and obsession obscured our young minds, and we would debate for hours over the merits of love, only to end up falling on each other in carnal need, oblivious to any thought of love in the moment. I would quote French philosophers at him. He would roll his eyes, telling me I was having an existential crisis and to come back to bed.
It was from this first encounter, I embraced the notion that love was a fruitless obsession, a dream that stole lives. He was a layover and I was a confused traveler unsure of my destination.

I’m still confused.

What is it about love that leaves you lost without a compass or map? You were my compass once and I spent eternity mapping your body, every soft curve: that little mole on the underside of your breast, the scar on your hip from a misjudged leap over a fence. I licked my way across that scar as you told me the story. You thirteen and fierce to prove the boys wrong; you had a fire in your spirit even then, and I longed to have seen you. Hair blowing in the wind, that wild mess of mane that still refuses to be tamed, you ran. Hands pushing yourself up and vaulting the fence, I can see the smug smile on your face now. I’ve seen it a thousand times already. You didn’t vault quite high enough, and the sharp metal spike tore through your hip, adding another ragged tear in those shorts you loved. A pair of thrift store jeans two sizes too big, faded into a pale blue, that you cut the legs off and replaced with ribbons. You were a gypsy even then. You landed clean though and held your head high claiming your success.

Forget travelling I just want to find home again.

Simple and uncomplicated, home used to mean a place of refuge. A place to strip off the masks we wear and relax. Even the food is simple. Apple, carrots, tea with toast, at home we eat so we don’t starve. It’s not the feast of flavors you go out seeking. It’s plain and comforting, only I can’t find comfort here anymore. I’m awake now and this stark expanse of simplicity is devoid of any color. Its limbo and I’m being punished for having not lived hard enough.

There were times I lived hard, or maybe it was just a fantasy. A dream I clung to in my vision of you. We met again after that night of the party. You were wearing a bohemian skirt and crocheted top that barely contained your breasts. I itched to touch you, to breathe you in. I was never a good catholic, but I almost sank to my knees and confessed my sinful thoughts to you right then. You smiled, as if you knew what I was thinking, and instead you asked if I read poetry.

“Sure. I love poetry.” Came my over eager response. I would have said anything to get you to spend more time with me, to continue looking at me with your soulful brown eyes. They held such mystery, and you seemed to see right through me. I did like poetry too, so it wasn’t a lie. I just hadn’t read any since Scott.

My second lover was even more unconventional than my first. It could be said that this state of being was the reason for my lack of love. He thrived on Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and introduced me to such passionate writers as Winterson and Coehlo.
I was still naïve and innocent, he was older and more sure.

I embraced this surety like a life preserver. He claimed to love me and proved it in this poetry. This haunting and tortured poetry, so I thought surely love meant suffering, and so I suffered. I dove into the drug filled madness with him and sipped absinthe in front of the fire. I wrote pale imitations of poetry, extoling all the hopelessness and pain I felt. Only it was all empty. It was a diversion to pass the time. He said I just hadn’t lived enough to really understand and feel it. Maybe he was right.

I hadn’t really lived. Not like in the movies, or as it appeared the people around me did.

It was with a short lived affair with a married woman that taught me the error of this. She was a realist, and scoffed at my notions that anything should look like it did in the movies. She said I had the right of it after all. That love was a chemical imbalance that fooled you into spitting out babies for the continuation of the species. Her bleak outlook made a refuge out of me.

“Come sit and read me some poetry then.” Your simple command had me trailing after you like a lost puppy. I followed you across the park until you came to a tree. A bent and wizened thing, it was garish amongst all the pretty oaks and willow trees. You hugged the tree and I was charmed. How could I not be, by the sweetness of your gesture, the oddness of it? I mean who hugs trees? But there you were, hugging this gnarled monstrosity and introduced it as grandmother tree.

“There is wisdom in this tree and it’s where I come to sit and listen.” You educated me before curling up under its branches and snuggling into its trunk. You pat the ground next to you imploring me to join you. I was helpless.

You were right you know. That tree was wise. The twisting of its trunk held the landscape of life. It gave way to cradle the body and made a nest of us. I pressed up next to you while you rested your head against my arm. You handed me a book. A red worn journal with gold designs on the outside, it looked too fragile to handle, and like you, was magnetically beautiful.

I opened the pages to find a Hodge podge of work, a veritable scrapbook of you. If you were a collage, this would be it, a kaleidoscope of riotous color and randomness. Like you, the images were limitless and filled with the unending possibilities of life. The pictures glued haphazardly inside the pages and over the pictures were words. Poems etched into life, some with names attributing the author, others just words floating anonymously on the page.

I read. There were simple haikus and sonnets. You opened my world to the romantic poets that day, and the sparse purity of Japanese poets. You laughed at the darker poets, whose poisoned words, reminded you to never let them win. You smiled and nodded, as my voice sang of virtues, I didn’t feel and had never known. In that sun dappled moment, I fell. I split open and bled my bitterness into the wind. That tree soaking into me and infusing me with steadiness and you melting into my body, feeding me hope.

“That was lovely. Thank you,” You said and kissed me on the cheek. A single touch, which was over too soon, save for the lingering trace of your finger, as it traveled down my cheek.

Jacques Lacan wrote: “What is real is narcissistic. What is imaginary binds.”
I became narcissus that day in the park. The person I was -reflected back at me from the shining depth of your eyes- was beautiful. I would gladly turn into a flower, if only, to just become the vision you saw me as. Here you were tangible in my arms, warm flesh and soft skin, but I was paralyzed to do anything about it. Instead I sat there mute as you stood up and smiled down at me, the wake of your kiss burning a question mark into my cheek.

What is it about unanswered questions that obsessively linger?

I have so many with you. Questions, I doubt, I’ll ever have the courage to ask.
There’s no point is there? You’re gone and I’m just a hollowed out husk that you left behind. All those words were just meaningless. Lies, that sound good in the moment to get you what you want. The air is filled with platitudes, that lay there flat like petrified pieces of shit, filling the air with the fetid stench of nothingness. Those too are meaningless in the absence; when love kicks you in the teeth, and reminds you why you never went looking for it in the first place.

There is a meanness inside me now where there wasn’t before. An anger so rich it seeps poison onto anyone who gets too close. I’d like to blame it all on you. Wrap it up in a pretty package, and leave the responsibility of it, on your doorstep, but I can’t. I want to go back to the beginning with you, but I can’t do that either.
Love is an impossible journey.

I didn’t see you again after that day in the park for months. I looked for you. I wandered around, searching out parties and cafes, hoping I would run into you. I had given up ever seeing you again, when you snuck up on me at the bookstore. I was elated. My vision blurred and I held my breath, afraid you would just disappear. You introduced me to your girlfriend and we chatted a bit before you left. I eased my heartbreak with Ben.

Beautiful, flawed Ben.