The letter L

I cleaned out my entire life, all the nooks, all the crannies, scrubbed clean with bleach and water. Discarded the extras, the fancy, the colored pens and books that have collected dust over the centuries. I had been coming home to an emptiness every day for years. Dating random woman, some with good hearts and kind intentions, but none fitting in me. There was always something that stopped me from proceeding, a look, an action, an overabundance of personality; fear, some excuse to not proceed and test the waters. It often became about sex to fast. The getting and using. They came to me like followers of a church someone wrote about in a Christian Science magazine, they were faithful woman, but none held me (as egotistical as that sounds).

These encounters would end just as fast as they started, I would know by the 3rd date, maybe the 4th that it wasn’t going to work and casual sex became a strain on my soul. Dinners and gifts and all I could do to create that ideal I had, a way to create love and affection and attraction. It never worked, it only left me feeling used by my disease, that vicious part of me that eats the doe eyed and helpless. It wasn’t that my motives were not pure, in my heart of hearts I wanted to love someone even though I ran at the sight of it many times. I had been watching a million stars in the sky above waiting on that one to shoot across the night and land in my heart.

I cleaned out my life, my heart was already emptied by the fall of old relationships and the failed prospects of new ones. If I am to live this life alone for now, why not be it wandering aimlessly instead of coming home day in/day out to this vacant apartment with very little life in it. My queen size bed had grown to big over the last few months and sleeping on the couch became a necessary evil in my life. I could roll into the crack where the cushions met the back and feel held. I could sleep to the tv on and it was like someone was in the house with me, watching over me, the flickering of the screen at 3am became a beautiful glow of comfort. I did all I could to turn this sad place into a mediocre hotel room with kitchenette. It became that the more I detached from this place the closer I got to walking away from this life…

I need to be loved, I need to dote and court and admire. I need to be needed, tiny kisses and dreamy eyes. This is who I am, love letters and candy hearts, surprise gifts and tentative adherence to every whim cast out into my life. I have run so hard from this reality of mine, escaping its touch, for as long as I can remember as much as I needed it, I killed me for it. It’s an uncontrollable fire that breathes in me and every breath without it is one from my dying heart. The duality of love and loss within me is so great, so grate. With one there is not the other and the way I take them in should be an immortal sin against myself. I have done anything and everything to be loved, chose a couple of the right woman and a ton of wrong ones, blind to the facts that sat before me on stiff metal chairs, holding cups of coffee and preaching the good word.

So now here I live in this hotel style apartment, money saved, jobs being completed, van packed and she comes into my life. I am on the final round of clean up and discard to set sails across the world or continental united states and she arrives in my life. In a black chariot, with golden eyes, a smile of sunshine and lips of roses. Tattoos that run her body and a beauty that holds her soul. I knew I was fucked when I met her 6+ years back on a cold wet fall day in September. She twirled around the parking lot asking me questions and opening the cracks of her life to me. I knew I was fucked when her tall frame kept me eye to eye with a future I thought would never happen. Blue overalls, bandana, striped shirt, black vans – I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she would never fuck with a basic guy like myself. How wrong I was…

We’re falling in love at a speed that sets off alarms and causes whiplash to the spectators. They’ll say it’s all wrong, falling in love takes time to cultivate and mature. They’ll tell you it’s infatuation above all and lust and you’re only seeking to fill a loneliness inside you. They’ll sit in their stiff chairs with the feeling of sticks up their asses and judge each move you make with prejudice. But they have not kissed her and been washed away with weak knees and dizzy head, they have woken to her eyes boring holes into your soul and adding extra layers of padding to your heart. They haven’t been where I have, saw what I’ve seen, touched what god made her of.

All the beautiful things in this world have rested in her heart, all the suns that set lighting up the sky with pastels made of orange sherbet and purple thistles, all the moons that have traversed this world so bold and bright on the darkest of nights, that all who are lost could find their way. She is the narrator of my future, the thin delicate fingers that toss me to and fro, the kiss of god, legs to my heaven and everything in between. She will rise and fall in me with the tides of life, she will be of my greatest treasures and saddest nights. I will pace parking lots, shed tears of joy and deal with pains she endures…

I was leaving an empty life to create a full one and all I needed to do the whole time was to be patient. You can have the money, the stocks and bonds. Take my cars and bikes and everything else (well maybe not the bikes). It is love that I crave, the devotion of her heart, the truth in her touch. I will run her down and never think twice of playing it safe. Love is for fools and I am the foolest of them all, I’d give my life’s blood for 5 more minutes locked to her kiss, another 10 times of her saying my name. I want to scream to the world and all who could care less that I love her! That her wild mind is that of mine and we were meant to be in the clouds of heaven and in the depths of hell.

Maybe this is over the top, maybe I really am the fool – but if not a fool for love then who should I be? Cautious and cool, we all know this is not me when it’s matters of the heart. Reserved and controlled, that is for the hip and slick and I am but a knobby kneed teenage boy with acne and a fist full of Playboys. Maybe your right and maybe I’m wrong, fast free love comes at a cost and maybe displaying my insanity for her and for all to see is the wrong move. Maybe the fool I am is not the one for love but the one for dreams and moments so intense they blind you from conscious choices…

Intense blinding, her warm center, our late evenings and sunny days, the quiet looks, small gestures and love letters filling this hollow home.