love | cygnoir.net

Always with me.

At dinner tonight, we got to talking. We talked about so many things, but one I wanted to write about before it slipped through the old brain-sieve. I am listening right now to a song that makes me think of someone I have not seen in years, someone I loved desperately with my then-heart. If I saw him again, I likely would have a flash of feeling, that electric eel around the collar one, remembering what it was like. Then I would have that certain relief of not having to love him anymore, of not having to succumb to muscle memory. The love is under glass in a museum I no longer visit. Sometimes I walk past the museum, and I can hear this song playing inside.

Posted on 11 Dec 2010 | Comments Off

she told me it took a long time

She told me it took a long time. She told me it took a long time before she stopped seeing him everywhere he wasn’t. She told me it took a long time to unlearn the cringing, to unfurl during the phone ringing. She told me it took almost as long as they were together to be comfortably apart, not to expect the other shoe to drop, his other shoe, when his feet weren’t even near. She told me it took a long time, not that she expected it to be short. Once you are terrorized in a certain way, she said, your body exists only within boundaries of panic. For long, hollow years later, she would be flooded with adrenaline from a glimpse of the color of his hair. Fight or flight, but of course she did neither. She told me it took a long time to allow herself...

Posted on 24 Nov 2009 | 1 comment

yellow pages

He puts his head on his hand, elbow beside the yellow pages. He scans the names and numbers, pausing to smirk at a funny bunch of letters. Today the book is of Reno, Nevada. He has never been to Reno, but he pictures it like Orinda in July, only flatter. Once he went to Orinda for a family picnic. It wasn’t his family; it was the family of a woman he tried to love. She tried to love him back. After a few years, the attempts weighed more than the result, and they parted over a steak dinner. After that, steak always reminded him of not knowing what to say.

Posted on 5 Oct 2009 | Comments Off

being three

Something I am learning from this exercise: the prompts often launch me in a completely different direction. I wonder what that’s about. I am reading a book called “How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving” by David Richo, and this passage struck me today: Childhood forces influence present choices, for the past is on a continuum with the present. Early business that is still unfinished does not have to be a sign of immaturity; rather, it can signal continuity. Recurrence of childhood themes in adult relationships gives our life depth in that we are not superficially passing over life events but inhabiting them fully as they evolve. Our past becomes a problem only when it leads to a compulsion to repeat our losses or...

Posted on 4 Jul 2009 | 2 comments

we know how to help

When your relationship is getting ruined we know how to help you. We will come into your house while you are at the grocery store, buying whatever the hell cereal you want to buy, now that there are no other arbitrary preferences in the house, and we will rearrange everything. We will confuse your weakened heart, so there is no longer a focus on the ever-present crumbling, the noise of a tow-truck always idling around the corner. We know that it is not about words of wisdom. Curse words are more apt but still not good enough. The words you want to collect and trash are the words you think you will never say again: “honey” or “baby” or “sorry” “I missed you” or “I know I was wrong” or “what do you...

Posted on 11 Dec 2008 | Comments Off

chapter two

While we were visiting Scotland in October 2008, FunkyPlaid asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes!

Posted on 28 Oct 2008 | 1 comment

nostalgic redux

These mornings are so foggy in the Sunset. Foghorns remind me of my beloved. I wrote a poem about an evening of ours, years ago, set to the soundtrack of a foghorn. Ever since then, I cannot hear a foghorn without thinking of him. I realize now how apt the symbolism is. This Saturday will be the fifth anniversary of the day I kissed him goodbye on the eve of his move to Scotland. Coincidentally, it was my half-birthday, so I never forgot the date. I tried. I tried to forget so much, but I kept hearing foghorns.

Posted on 20 Aug 2008 | 1 comment

one month of gratitude

My social software habits have become dreadful. My status updates are usually complaints about work or illness, compiled as an archive of generic distress that makes me cringe. I am not a victim of circumstances, and I want to behave accordingly. To this end, each day this month I will attempt to write about the things in my life for which I am grateful. Today’s subject is the easiest: I am grateful for FunkyPlaid. Yesterday I felt utterly out of sorts by the time I returned home from work, and he listened to me, talked gently to me, drew me a bath and rubbed my aching, neglected feet. I generally avoid thinking about my feet because they creep me out, but today they creep me out a little less. That’s saying something. Last night is just an...

Posted on 9 Jul 2008 | 8 comments