I love the feeling of falling deep inside a story, giving up little bits of my everyday reality to a better, grander theme.
I am so good at living out particular stories. Stories where I save people from a reality they are scared of, that doesn't feed them. Stories where I walk away. I've walked away from the domestic story so many times. Three times offered rings, once accepted because I knew I was leaving anyway and it seemed kind. It was completely fucking cowardly though. I tried to offer it back to her and she cried and said no. I keep it in a box on the windowsill.
On my mind tonight:
It was four years ago. I had known him ten years. A divorce waiting in the wings, papers in the mail. Life probably seemed dull and heartbroken and lacking in all fecundity. And then there I was and he remembered meeting me for the first and I was wearing red pants. How cavalier, a woman in red pants. But this time I had on a little dress and hair down my back and sweat on my face. And he saw me as his medication back to masculinity. I took him to my jungle hale and he played guitar and cards and drank whiskey with outlaws. He felt the mana of 40 foot waves. He let me come to his timeshare and clean my red-dirt clothes and one night, he made love to me. I hadn't been with a man in years. I bled.
His wounds began to heal. His swagger came back. He went back to the mainland and sent me a ticket to meet him in Tokyo. I felt him healing. The virility that a broken marriage had took from him was restored. He would write and tell me loved me, that there had never been anyone like me in his life.
And then slowly his life became to ripen where he was, and after a brief mourning, I let him go. I saw him last November in Denver. He's with the same kind of woman he always ends up with. I finished my whiskey and left. Back to SF, always leaving.
I want more than to be a palate cleanser. I don't want to be a caretaker, nor a way to help a man find his way to another safe, sweet girl. I am very sweet, but I dream big and I've travelled and stayed single to live those dreams.
I love watching someone I care for blossom with their renewed urges, seeing potential ripe again. It fills me up too; I smile more at strangers, keep eye contact a heartbeat too long. It's good medicine for everyone. But I am far away, again.
