NYC

[carose59]

NYC


That I have not yet unpacked means nothing.
Rummaging through my suitcase, looking for black stockings
                                                                flowered shirt
                                                                  suntan lotion
                                                              does not count.
I have not unpacked.

I have not taken my clothes down to wash them for my real life.
They sit in my suitcase, wrinkled butterflies back in the cocoon:
My happy pink dress
                   (now with a tear in the back from the weight of
                   Brooklyn water rinsing away salt and sand and bliss),
My old purple skirt
                    (that swayed with my hips while I flirted my way
                              through Little Italy)
My sweet summer dress, made up of all the colors of the rainbow
                                   (worn to the cemetery to say I love you)
My soft, new satin panties, bought to sleep in,
                             (for provocation and discretion)
                              and that day, worn just for you).
                              I took them off before I got to the cemetery,
        tore down that last barrier.

                              I did that for you, too.

                              I would have done more.
                               Would have spread my legs for Michael,
                               would have let him,
                               would have 
                               would have—
                                            thinking of you

                                            thinking of you


                                            thinking of you.

Always thinking of you.


There is nothing to the longing I have
for that moment of homecoming when I got out of the cab,
       (you picked out the apartment)

For the comfort of dreams dreamt in the bed you slept in
       (vicarious as that other Goldilocks,
           though my hair is hibiscus now.
        I wanted your mother to love me . . . .)

I stroked the furniture, longing to feel you inside me,
                       a penetration of my soul, deep as understanding.
                         I want to live your life.

It means nothing that the pictures
                            and postcards have been shared reluctantly.

Or that I haven't called your mother.
               Can't dial the number.
         Have no words to say to her.

Or that the sweet,
                  tiny
                pieces of you I brought home in my pocket
I have since locked in my heart.
What I bring out to show is done diffidently, at a distance.
                   "Doctor, I have a friend who . . . ."


(Those days when,
                       in place of your voice there was a silence
                       in my head, I thought I would lose my mind.
  Jet lag.  Hard to come back from vacation.  Not 
enough sleep.  Nothing more.  You weren't gone.  I wasn't lonely.

It doesn't mean a thing.)


In your absence, the cold
                            breath
                          of reality brushed my mind, bringing    doubt.
The truth is: you are gone.  And I never knew you.
What separates us is not my satin panties but death.
Stories from your mother cannot change that.

And all my fantasies are nothing more.  Your voice is silence,
   not a purr in 
my mind.

Am I really the Lady of Shallot,
          with no life but these fevered delusions of a phantom lover
who could find me beautiful in spite of what
       the mirror says?
Existential claptrap.
If a heart breaks in the forest with no one around to hear it,
                  does it mean
      any less?

I am hardwired for delusion,
to find truth in make-believe,
to claim fantasy for my reality.

Maybe that credulity was needed to 
  open the door that let you inside me.
If delusion is life
And reality death,
How do I choose?
A man talking      sense to himself is no madder than
a man talking nonsense
       to himself.
Or just as mad.
And this delusion is as sweet as your mother, buttering my toast,
                     as hard as the first hill of the Cyclone,
                     as inexorable as the waves that soaked my dress.

I have carefully avoided the tightrope of talking about this passion.
When fear has overcome me, I've wrapped the truth
                                                        in a soft lie of safe,
                                                                  teary fear:
                  The Lady of Shallot peering sweetly from her window,
       longing for life.
But that's just fabrication, 
                                 my good-girl persona protecting me again
(as I suspect you used that bad-boy image to protect your sweet
       heart).
The truth is: I burn with your passion,
My heart aches with the rhythm of your heart beating inside me;
                     your love pushes me to love myself
        because you are there with me
               and you need that love.
                     You have replaced my tears with the ocean.