Take II

Once upon a time a stupid child with a stupid dream made herself into a fool. She wondered and chased, ached and grew, discovered and faltered.

When I finished that obligatory chapter I meant to bury myself, not only you. I meant to bury us…together. Perhaps we could stay suspended in that beautiful memory, a frozen specimen of the past, living the same days and feelings over and over. Perhaps our cold bodies could cling to each other for warmth and in that eternal bond we might create a spark that would sustain us. Go ahead and be cynical. “The great ride is not fun forever,” you said, “and if we stay we will perish”…two forgotten souls, erased from all the world’s histories. Well I could ride this rollercoaster every day the sun graces our faces. “And if the sun would never come up again? And we were trapped in this mad night game? What then?” Then maybe our ugly, pale faces will reflect the thumbnail of God through each other’s eyes.

I’m not sure if you faded or disappeared, it’s all a blur. But I know that even as crazy days, wild nights, new experiences and new faces meshed with the contours of your own, your lavishly pungent memory remained hidden in the depths of my thoughts. It all happened so fast, or maybe too slow. Either way, it died.

Now what am I to think and feel…now that our life strings have struck a peculiarly mystical and minor chord. Sharp-minor, perhaps. As I come with my new identity do you even remember me? I kept my mystery…the hardest feat of all. But I have saved no one. I am no hero, no child of angels, no purveyor of deliverance. I try to remember you and think of you as I did—just to revel in our past glory—but I still see flashes of desperate criers, one after another, on their knees, pew upon pew of ignorant believers, mouths wide open but voiceless, tongues outstretched toward a stale square of salvation.

Your face slips in and out of my dreams and reveries like a wicked salmon, swimming sneakily between the currents, taking a route undesired by the strong but helpless river, a route so jarringly unnatural and yet timelessly rehearsed and structured into a pattern simpler than a primal heartbeat. I am not in love. The palpitations of my own heart beat to the same irregular rhythm of my stumbling words. I am not in love. A deep breath—in through the nose and—I know you’re here. I am not in love. I am a stupid child. I am not in love.