Love called me up; damn bright and early. She usually doesn't open her eyes until noon drags its ass over her. But here she was, sad and lonely on the telephone; as I’ve heard it said.
Get up at 5 in the morning to drag a comb over my head and brush teeth with a cheek full of mouthwash, it’s called a quickie. Some dirty payphone awaits me, some drunk and passed out love, still clutching the receiver, talking to her dead relatives through the beeping end of it. Ill get there as I have countless times, and carry her home to her messy apartment with her strange little bed, with her unflattering blousy clothes shot all up and down the carpets. Not the type of dress you would expect from this metaphor.
Today is different. Love meets me in the park, under a thin and rain glistening tree, under a sky that is just breaking to accept the sun. She doesn’t reek of cheep absinthe or even tobacco; she just meets me fairly and surely under the tiny branches above.
In her sonorous voice, she begins and ends most defiantly with three catastrophic words, made and aimed for my sensitive ear.
"I am sorry"...
From the mouth of love came this dramatic verse, so much so that my own mouth opened as if to finish "sorry" for her. It was said with such conviction, so that my eyes became wet and my head sank almost to meet the top of her tiny head. I knew it was not her that needed to apologize, but that she was saying a collective sorry for what it all together had made the world into.
I could only look at the back of her head as she led me out of the park and into a street crowded with blank looks and empty faces. Her sharp little claws pinched the skin of my palm, but I was so content to be walking with an old friend that I barely noticed. It seemed that hours had passed as mere moments, and our fleet footed pace had carried us to a different part of the world entirely. Here there were quiet lawns with only a few red fall leaves to dust them, and only a shrub or two, green and opulent to crest the sharp edges of a manicured yard.
Her feet pattered quicker and she let go my hand, to jut and hide under the sill of some fine suburban home. It had brass cherubim over the garage, a gilded mailbox and the crackling of children leaking carefully out of half open morning windows. A glance gifted to the back yard showed an older daughter perhaps, swinging with her back to us, and under some vine covered and latticed bench swing.
Love pointed into the window, but I was scared to look, to be caught, and to be judged. She pointed harder and made her lips tight and pursed. I peered over my hands and saw the living room interposed through pink fingertips. Mom and Dad sat on each end of the couch, hands flat on laps and eyes dumb and wide towards a flickering screen. Blue and white image backlashes lighting up their sagging cheekbones and drooped lips. Kids fit neatly into individual rooms; I could see them through the window, them near the edges of the doors to their respective environments, caught up in doing something to distract them from interacting. I looked at love and saw her eye glisten and close.
She asked me if that was what "I" wanted. I saw her point. I told her that I didn’t think so anymore. She smiled a quick smile as she often does when she is happy with you. We both walked away with a little something that day. For me it was the remote control that they left on the coffee table when they zipped off to a soccer game without locking their door. For love it was the satisfaction of being a gloating parable, and of course their gilded fucking mailbox.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment