I Wish You

- October 2013

Hand flung up into the air,

Head cocked up as if to feel the warmth of the sun

Smiling down on her early-20’s face. 

Welcoming its rays, child of the sun, child of the leaves, child of the wind.

She belongs to, is a partner to,

This bright, dangerous sphere in the sky.

Loose pants, shirt slipping nonchalantly, suggestively, carelessly

Off her smooth shoulders.

Leather.

Boots.

Boots that look a little big, a little clunky, a little butch.

Big ol’ messanger bag, also too big, too clunky, too – nevermind.

She’s wearing grey.

But the autumn leaves that dance around her make this picture

Gleam with anticipation and love and promise.

Her hair is messy, long, tangled, brunette.

Of course, brunette.  Always brunette.

Her bangs are too short.

Her face is too long.

Her lips are too pink,

Her eyes, too naive, too hopeful.

But as she faces away from the camera,

Headed down a road no one knows where

Except for that sun and those leaves and that sky,

She’s the angel of the path.

Carefree traveler.

Wanderer. 

No direction.  Or the right direction.

The only direction?

Artsy.

“It’s artistic,” she’ll say,

Does say, when people compliment her and she names my

Last ex-love.  He was in charge of the image

Capture.

---

Artistic, my ass.

He's captured her swimming in grey clothes and 

Drowning in oversized boots, 

Writhing black locks of hair, and a small tornado

Of lemon colored birch leaves.

What makes it all so beautiful?  So poetic?

The fact that she's greeting an open road?

Her wrist flapping "hello" to possibility, 

(Or "goodbye" to obligations),

Her up-turned face whispering something like

"Namaste!" to the cosmos?

What makes her so “tough,” so “impressive”?

I wonder bitterly.  And then,

I hope your relationship withers and dies

And comes out crunchy and fragile and broken and refracted

As those leaves that she seems to celebrate in her tableau.

Didn’t I hail six feet of snow with you, bury into a bank

Armed with nothing but a sleeping bag and knife to weather

The frozen night?  Didn’t I

Walk nine miles uphill with a 30 pound pack in snowshoes?

To prove to you and myself

That very question.

I’m tough, I’m adventurous, I can do this.

Why wasn’t I enough?

Near the end, life with you was like a sleeping in a snowstorm.

Buried.

Frozen.  

Boring.

Biting insults and pointless icy quips.

No crimson leaves, softly falling.

Not a downy, feathery, blanket-y snow.

But faces whipped raw, mine stinging 

With backlash of my multiple failures

Presented to me in your steely hard voice.

Your blue, frigid eyes glinted with anger

At the many things I didn't know I'd done.

---

I would have wished for you

Some period of reflection.

Never pain.

No.

But I do hope this relationship sheds its cloak of

Glamour and glory and impulsive beauty.

I wish for you to sit by a pool and stare at your reflection

And wonder at who you’ve become and what you want to be.

Cliche as that sounds, ridiculous as it seems.

I wish for you some period of solitude. 

A long period of solitude, if I'm honest.

Not because I'm not over you, but because I'm not over wishing you

Happiness and the very best fulfillment.

I wish for you some self-recognition and self-knowledge.

Real-ness.

Hard-ness.

I wish for her a little real-ness and hard-ness too.

Because life is real, and it’s hard, sometimes.

Through this lens of sunshine and leaves and antique brick pavers

And young hands tossed into the air freely!

Everything looks quaint.

I just hope this lens doesn’t fragment itself

And leave you lost in that land

I cannot name, cannot recognize.

It's beautiful, but there are no landmarks, 

I don't want you lost there.

Lost, more than ever.

I wish you found.