September 14, 2003
Black and White
I remember sleeping together before we slept together.
You picked me up on a Monday night. I was sitting on the stone porch of Collins Hall, feeling very Alanis-Ani-Like in my brown wool hat, my scarf wound doubly around my neck, preserving for the kisses you might plant. We got in your truck and I felt warm and safe, though nervous, my overnight bag at my feet as though this were some sort of innocent retreat.
I was worried about my mom. I remember that anxiety like a song, something you hear ages later and are shocked by how far you have come from it. It's only been a year, and I am an entirely different person.
What sort of music did we listen to in the car? What movie did we watch when we got to your place? What time did we go to bed? When did we get up? These little details have fallen from me, outlines shaped to another girl, a younger girl. I am panicked by how unlike me she is, and yet you loved her. And you love me.
More? Less?
Tonight I could pack a bag and rush back to you, the tempation is so strong I could call now, disrupt your work, begging. My clothes are just there, in the closet, new jeans and old sweaters. The keys to my car, my car, the half of a tank of gas, means to an end. A single class missed, a choir practise? Is it worth it?
But who would that be running back? Me, or her? I could cry for this rent in my soul, this fabric of the past pushing through, undoing my carefully wrought seams of now. Is that silk thread falling away? Is that memory?
O, God, how I remember.
Your breath on my neck. Your chin, scratching, when you kiss me. Soft and straight, your hair, and I'm running my fingers through it and you're making small content sounds and I'm not sure if you're asleep or awake but I know I'm dreaming because you'll turn over and reach for me and wrap the blanket about us, and snuffle my hair and sigh, and I'll drift back until you startle the both of us awake, and we're shifting, changing, growing in the sheets, and I've found myself in a double bed and your arms, and I'm away and she's still there, this woman you love, this woman I am that I didn't know I could be, she could teach me to dance, if she wanted to, but I think she likes to watch me flounder so she can pretend she's still somehow what she was but I am I am I am who she was! We fit together, me and this girl. Sometimes I can't see where she ends and I begin, where I begin and she ends. Where we are.
She and I, we fit like you and me.
We fit. Like wooden pieces that have rubbed so long against eachother that they've come to recognize the grooves of their other half, and they're always reaching, seeking, wanting that press of face against face, plane against plane. I love you, Michael, not because you complete me but because you've shown me how to complete myself.
You were the rook and I was a queen but I couldn't figure out which side I was on, and I was too scared to look down and see the blazing colour of my form. You embraced me and bent my head against your chest, and only then could I see my skin reflected against yours.
I love you.
astera at 8:21 p.m.