i belong to you

Why is the measure of love loss?

These words from Jeanette Winterson ring like bells time and time again, and it is by some grave misfortune that they have never yet rung false.

I miss you even before you're gone; in the days before the word "goodbye" has had the chance to sully our tongues, in the hours before we separate our final load of clean laundry, and in the minutes before we wolf down our last sandwich at The Stand. Merely thinking of our departure-- though of course it sordidly haunts the entrails of my mind-- is blasphemy to my naive heart.

Those final, lingering seconds before we force ourselves apart like stubborn children severing two stuck magnets are invariably the worst. My mouth somehow forms the words that repel you, but my eyes beg you to melt into me forever.

When I'm away from you, I am losing. When you leave me, as you must, I will have lost.

It is I for whom the bell tolls, each dull vibration a carefully measured length of yarn or a brick of pyrite or a plot in the land we waste away in until there is nothing left but the pain of our unadulterated memories.

circle in the sand

Oh, baby when you look for me
Can you see forever ?
I begin baby, where you end
We belong together...

I suppose there will always be some memories. They are the ones that come raging down when least expected, the ones that explode from the mere prick of a line of poetry or a clumsy click or (worst of all) an innocent question.

I wish I could convince myself that these memories are harmless. I want to believe that they aren't suppressed desires and that there's a simple Freudian explanation for their persistence. I wish I could deny that they even exist and put an end to it once and for all.

But I know they're not harmless trifles, because at times they control me like the strings of a marionette and I am rendered helpless to their pull. They make me hunt for you and hurt for you because I still want to know that you're okay, that you're happy.

When I am powerless to remember, I look for you. I Google your name and find your picture (you really did cut your hair), and a description I know you wrote because you wrote one so like it three years ago. You're the same, except for your gourmet taste-- now you like pomegranate season and pumpkin risotto instead of candied orange peels. Maybe you're trying to forget, too.

Baby can you hear me ?
Can you hear me calling ?

Answer my imaginary call, tell me truly that you are free from the pain, the bitterness, the sorrow. Tell me that you have found some new morsel of joy in your life, that you have found someone else to share your life with.

My salvation relies upon yours. And I hate it.