wish

I said I would go be sad now for a bit, but no one waits for you to do this, nothing gives you time.

My parents called right after I posted, which was minutes after my call with T. I had to talk to them so I had to pick up. And then while I was talking to them numbly, discussing insurance problems, the plumber arrived at my door finally. So I got off with them, and the plumber proceeded, after a quick examination, to tell me how the month-long spreading leaky ceiling in my house was my fault.

The showerhead was loose… The water was dripping back through the hole. You were making the water yourself, this whole time.

I laughed for lack of a better answer, feeling rather stupid. The plumber laughed back.

My voice felt distant. I felt cold, so I put on a sweater. The skin on my arms felt crawly.

It was not because of the plumber. No, he was fine, quite plump and chummy.

Better luck next time, he said, as he shut my house’s door.

T’s voice was shaky throughout, nervous and a bit sad. I knew what was coming but then of course, I held hope until the very last downward turn of his fumblingly fast declaration. And it was not a hope held on so I could have sex this weekend or the next. (Though that would have been nice.) It was a hope for a stage that had already passed away.

Not enough time. (People are knocking down my ceilings so they can let the woodwork dry as we speak.)

To not sit on his lap half-naked again, to not have that bright moment before the pushing in of his cock, to not even have hands pushed inside me with his voice and…

No point. Not right now.

I miss. Sitting here and typing. I’m not devastated, but I need to cry. Between the doorbells of the various workers who came to my house, I played piano of all things, and cried. It felt like nothing, not me crying, nor me playing.

I told my friend half-way across the world, but then she had to leave before we could fully talk.

That pig, she said. It’s what friends say. I’d said nothing to give her that impression.

No, not really, I said. It’s exactly what I would do soon enough.

Yeah but he probably met someone else, that’s why he’s decided now.

He’d given me his reasons. His pain, his life, wanting to devote himself more to someone. All made sense enough to me.

Maybe. I don’t think so. I don’t really care. The point is it’s done.

He told me that I don’t know.

….You don’t know, he said, I’m actually quite a… romantic.. I need…

I knew, I know. Takes one to know one. What are these parts we think we can show without showing all the other ones? We are whole. We are our root. We walk in and we are what we are, and with some, you can feel it, feel it more than any one extended tendril.

Delicate his hands were and he had many of them
Hidden almost shamefacedly behind his back

Maybe one day I’ll put up all the rest of that, though it was not written for him. It is too old for that. But he has read it already.

I don’t want to write much now about him. In terms of what meeting him and the experience has given me, I mean. I think there will be time in these coming months to evaluate all that.

It’s funny, I was telling a friend last night that it would feel more natural to celebrate a new year around this time, like some do. This is more a time when you get a sense of the wheel coming back round. I told her how I have been happier than I have been all of a sudden lately, how I’ve found myself appraising where I stood a year before this, and how I feel another big change coming up. This is spring, this is what it does, you can fight it, but you can’t.

And now my parents tell me that tomorrow is the day I am meant to celebrate this. I did not know. It’s the very day I’ve been thinking of, the day I’m supposed to hang my wishes from a tree or a rosebush.

I have no trees. I have no rosebush. I tie my wish here underneath this photo I took. I won’t write it or draw it, though I should. I think maybe that is the point. But I will just try to imagine it clearly for a moment instead.

My wish is for him. And my wish is for me. And it is not a wish for us.