I could smell the cold of the water as I toed the shore. Once again we were shoulder to shoulder, pushing, wincing at the inevitable. I figured I should do as the polar bear and jump. But it's so warm on my shore here, with him to hold me at night, with him that I know will be there when I am not wearing make-up or when I am broke or aching from the strain. The water out there rushes and turns and seems to want to escape itself. The tumult of it creates an anxiety that could also be named anticipation. The clouds above are dark and lazy, heavy with storm; heavy with the formality of precipitation: part of it's job. For me, for most, we call this a dark omen. I am sure clouds don't appreciate the bad rap. They continue to roll above and I think back to last I saw him and an instant weight is added, like the weight of water in the sky. I feel thicker, slower, and I just want to escape; hide in a day when I didn't have to remember someone lying to me. Someone denying me the simple human comfort of unconditionality...
He walked in the door of my small apartment with his head full, so full that any unrelated thoughts couldn't squeeze their way between the scenario that he created in his head. The elaborate cliche story that played through his head all night had so many matinees that it was real, a true anecdote in his autobiographical fiction. The tequila hadn't helped to clean the falsities or add any sense of reality. He threw some distractors into our greetings to play off his intentions, but I read them like I read liquor on his breath. I ask the question that didn't need to be and he answers with "where were you last night". Realizing the motive I reply "I'm sorry for not calling you back but I was still upset from the night before". I don't think he heard or cared or knew any other reality beside the one that lived and breathed and screwed in his version. He seemed to visualize with his eyes open, me on top of some other man. The pain seemed to stem from blistered pride than the loss of what we had. It was part of his story, not mine. Into the night two sides clashed, an endless stubborn war that no one would win; the ending already writ.
Something gone, or always missing was the only solution and like a key to a lock, this would never be right without it. So I slept with half closed eyes and restless laps swallowed my confidence. Laps around the warmth of together, the calm of forever. Laps through anger and alcohol and absence. When I woke up, he was gone.
So the shore and I are more familiar than I would like to be, that thin line that isn't water and isn't earth, that isn't one thing or the other, that thin fence I walk in indecision. The shore is safe from loneliness, the water, a torrent of the welcoming unknown. "Brace yourself"