The Weary Never Sleep

It’s almost like something clicked. Like I crossed a threshold and there is no such thing as going back. For months I wasn’t sweet on anybody. In fact, I was somewhere between bored and bitter about love. And physical affection? Forget it. Who needs it.

Yes, I actually thought these things and felt this way.

Then the full moon a week or so ago, and then the frenzy and flurry of faces at work, culminating in so much heat and aggravation of the spirit last night and I am dumbstruck, crippled almost, but some knocking desire that’s stalkingly familiar.

Sia comes by the coffeehouse to say goodbye and I actually kiss her across the countertop, a platter of chocolate croissants beneath us, her hairline like something chiseled and perfect from ancient Greece. And that fast she is gone, gone, out the door, see ya later.

Later, the ex-boyfriend GP comes by. He is sick and sad and feeling low and he is saying something like “Would you travel to India with me?” which, coming from him, sounds like a marriage proposal, and I do no answer him, but stare, deep, deep into those pastel green eyes I once knew and loved so intensely. He is alone, lonely, indecisive. And here I sit, the rock of myself like a hollow shell in the face of all life’s emotional uncertainties.

I get home thinking I am safe from myself and the world and yet, I’m still hungry, so to speak. I call my Colorado poet who is sleepy and sweet on the phone, reading Harry Potter in bed before another long day of work tomorrow. He can hear the restlessness in my voice, sense the struggle in my ankle-inertia that’s about making me stark raving mad. “Go to sleep, Schlutzy. Just go to sleep. That makes everything better.” And there is a long pause, and I know he’s right. I should throw in the towel, call it a night, not even finish the glass of wine I’ve poured. “I mean. I love you,” he says. And right away I say, “I love you, too,” but I want to say it like “I love you” or “I could fall in love with you,” or “Don’t you think that sometimes we dance around love? That our love is the poem we haven’t written yet?” But I don’t, and he mutters the softer sounds of sleep, closes his book, and it is time to go. “Night, Schultzy.”