Jettison
With the letting go came a great and thunderous opening which took me by surprise.
Again you divide us, he said, his disappointment bitter and poetic, befitting this epic, terrible, unsustainable love.
For a moment I hesitated, my certainty wavering.
It’s only for a time, I said. Still not ready to jettison him completely.
It’s fine, he says, without meaning it.
And I can see his beautiful face, like no other I have ever loved, his magnificent beard and those deep, mysterious eyes and the shocking gap between his teeth and I can hear his voice and its timbre and turn that I always forget, and I am wrenched by the intensity of where he sits in my soul.
I am Messi, he had said. You are Barcelona. You can make me the greatest of all time.
No, I say. Our relationship is Messi and we are both Barcelona. Together we can make this the greatest of all time.
I believe this in my deepest part.
But in practice we are simply messy.
Goodbye I say, for real, and run out into the afternoon wind, droplets of rain challenging me to go back into hiding. But as I inhale the ocean I am as light as air, my feet barely touching the ground so that I would not be surprised if I took flight under my own power.
I dance as I walk and the music in my ears is technicolored and all the lights are blazing in my heart and I am awake again to the full erotic possibility of life, turned on with a thousand watts.
As I turn for home I pass a man standing on a rock, the water lapping at his feet as he looks out into the ocean and writes in a notebook. The world is showing me that poetry and adventure and beauty and mystery are never only in one place.
And I know with a startling clarity and deep sense of home that, for now, this is the full fuck-yes I was looking for.
