the sidewalk bends where your house ends.

I broke you down that time, remember? I wasn't in my right mind, you said. I told you about yourself. I said things I ought not to have said, you said, except really those were the things I ought to have said all along, especially the time that you did that horrible thing.

They were just dogs. They just had to be taken to a professional conference, and left in a hotel room where I was terrified someone would steal them -- rare breed, crated, unaccustomed to anything but the sun shining on them through our kitchen and dining room while I was gone.

Just dogs.

I was sorry if you didn't like the image you'd constructed with my assistance. I really was. It's so much easier. It keeps it going so much longer -- the minimizing, the less-than, the biting of tongues and the self-edits.

"You are not yourself right now. I just can't even talk to you right now."

Except I was. I finally was.  If you couldn't handle that -- the unusually harsh tone of voice, mascara smeared from an exhausted crash interrupted only when you finally chose to show up three days later with demands and judgments -- I just didn't know. I couldn't help you. I couldn't adjust my volume. I finally didn't know for sure you wouldn't hit me. I finally saw an edge in your eyes my soul couldn't tolerate. 

I finally acknowledged an absolute willingness to take responsibility for pretty much anything that I couldn't abide from a bag  boy at the grocery, much less a man who stood up every day and said he was there for whatever. 

You rejected even the things you knew I was right about. You handed me all that you could find in the vicinity to shut me up, the things that worked, the things that never did. You didn't care. You just wanted it to stop, to end -- not even just opposition, although that was the worst. Just, everything. Noise. Input. Opinions. Girls. How we thought and felt as a result of what you said and did. Yeah, no.  

My understanding is that you have some measure of fulfillment now, that you landed safely, probably when it all got to be too much. I understand that there are three versions of you running around in the world, three! (I'm also quite the internet snooper, truth be told.)

I think of you sometimes. It's a pathetic Jack Kerouac thing, it's middle-aged people reminiscing about acid and my compulsion to tell them about my cracked concrete steps on that unseasonably warm April day and you asking me if I'd sign on, if I'd go to Santa Fe.

It's knowing I knew so hard that no, I'd never go, and wanting so hard for you to wash your face and straighten up so we could leave.

It was everything then. You were everything then. And I'm sadly sure that your likely delightfully sober wife hangs the lights and gave that precious U2 t-shirt of mine away long ago, the one I gave you when I gave you other things except you had no other clean clothes so I decided I needed to give you my coolest garment too, you know, for some reason.  

I miss that shirt, still, like I don't miss you at all. I earned it. You took it. 

Comments

[schmutzie]

I feel protective of you, even though this happened years ago. I want to kick that old incarnation of him.

[flutter]

exactly what Schmutzie said. Exactly.

[TwoBusy]

Sorry it took me so long to getting around to reading this. But I'm really glad I did.