Residue
Every year around this time, when the air turns cold
and leaves litter the road like careless brushstrokes;
without fail, I think of you.
You move from being a buried but, well remembered treasure
to a fully excavated, invasive wound.
I am not deluded by ingested psychobabble or hope.
I know no matter how much I write,
there are things I will remember as long as I live.
Such as;
my high school classroom with the shades pulled down
and the door left just slightly ajar
in order to be in compliance with some oppressive rule
that the conversation we had, beyond broke.
Dracula at Proctor’s, where I closely monitored your reaction
to the two girl’s kissing and how your breath was held and our eyes met.
Caldor’s, where I sent flowers never received
and Sam’s Club when I was working the door
and you eyed me from electronics‘, just visiting Jan.
Before you left I had moved to a register
and was overdue for a break but couldn’t move with you in line.
My supervisor inpatient, said “take her with you” and so I did.
You left with a rough draft of at least five poems
scribbled on the back of paper place mats from my second job and legal pad.
I tried to object, thinking you wouldn’t be able to separate stanza from stream of thought
but you said as a student of English, you were used to it.
The bus stop in front of KFC where you wanted to pick me up, but I declined.
Driving home with you on four donuts because you couldn’t afford tires,
you said “ I hope you aren’t afraid to die” and I really wasn’t.
You asked me if I liked the light brown leather jacket you borrowed from your sister
and although I had never seen anything more beautiful than you in it,
I simply replied, “it’s alright”.
The hickie on my neck, you put, so big
everyone at school called me “hoover”
because they thought I must have made it myself with a vacuum.
“Anytime” by Brian Mcknight
we heard at the same time in very separate places,
thinking of each other.
You driving to my house and the cup of change you cashed in at Mcdonald’s,
shortly after a confession and a song you heard you said, made you think of us.
“Don’t stand so close to me” by The Police.
I look at your picture now, knowing, there is no closure to be gained.
I have thought long and hard
as though this were life or death,
but in conclusion, there is nothing you could do or say.
I wish there was.
I wish there was unfinished business or wrongs to be made right.
I used to think there was something I did,
that drove you away,
something like a catastrophe in my heart spoken too soon
that could have been prevented with a bit of apprehension,
but no.
It wasn’t me, it wasn’t you.
It was a case of bad timing or not meant to be,
in any event you will not be left to blame.
You were just this beautiful disaster,
mixed up, mistreated, vulnerable twenty five year old grad student
and here I was handing you adulation and my number.
God, I adored you, I mean,
I worshipped the ground;
long after you had walked
away.
I was detailed and talented for my age.
I came on strong on paper and blushed in person.
You were older, but my soul implied I was the elder
and yet you dared to fight nature.
There were complications,
but there’s nothing I would have not given to change your mind in the end.
The first night you came inside,
you didn’t know how damaged I already was.
I tried to show you but you weren’t scared off.
You came back for more and it got personal.
I delved back into the past and you didn’t run.
You talked about your father’s infidelity and Evan.
I wanted to be better for you than both of them.
No matter what anyone says, I will never fault you.
You didn’t know.
I thought I knew what love was, years before we met,
the way an adolescent presumes to know the world over a parent,
making up for a lack of experience with passion and rebellion.
I had no idea I could care so much about something more than myself,
until you left.
For years, I have been haunted by these
vivid, intense dreams.
I am always chasing you inside a school,
not like a stalker and prey, but more like a lost child trying to describe home.
I’ve heard minutes of sleep feel like hours
and have been well fooled searching for your face like a bold numeral.
I’ll find you just before waking,
all done up in a white mostly buttoned blouse,
like the one from that first October
and black dress pants or a skirt with dark stockings,
your glasses that suggest a professional
and an overall a sense of you, clearly having moved on.
In that denouement, my eyes never fail to well up
at first sight, as I exhale hard
after having searched for you so long.
The whole thing, you would think was so well rehearsed,
that I would react just once, differently, but nope.
Each and every time is like an overly dramatized movie scene
I have already seen a thousand times without ever expecting to cry.
They are more sporadic now than they were
but, I still have them, after so long,
feeling just the same.
Isn’t that crazy?
For you, I took down all the walls, like layers of clothes
I had worn to feel warm and safe after birth.
With you, I laid naked,
as though there was never a more natural place outside the womb
where I could not be hurt or left alone.
In you, I trusted, more than God when I believed.
But, you didn’t know.
You were underappreciated and easily impressed.
I was gracious and good with words.
We were good for each other, for awhile.
Only I, needed more.
But, you didn’t know.
Everybody has that one…..
that got away…
that lies beneath ……
that hurts forever….
that failed to recognize its own strength.
Perhaps it’s a rite of passage, for us each to never get past something.
My heart was broken, but as an organ it’s regenerative.
My spirit has suffered, but can be recovered.
My soul was torn but will be sewed.
You took my life, but
it’s not the worst thing that’s happened.
Like survivor’s guilt and after shock,
there are just bits and pieces to be dealt with forever and ever.
Like outpatient treatments and the daily responsibilities of an adult,
there are things that will never not be a part of your life now,
lists and burdens that shape your unpaid hours
and tell your personal business like an unplucked brow.
Anyone can look at me and tell something’s wrong,
but they don’t know what.
It’s not the original damage that’s visible,
it’s not the immediate cause left at the scene.
It’s not a tell tale blood spatter,
that points a finger or permits trial.
Mine was a clean kill,
a perfect murder of trust
and further ability to love.
All that’s left is in ruins.
These seasonal memories of you
that linger and return,
year after year,
dream after dream
like some stubborn
residue
that can never really, leave.
