Before:
“Messy. Get out.”
A smile, “No. My choice. It will be beautiful.”
“Jesus Christ. Time?”
“Kill it.”
“This will destroy you.”
“Necessary,” a tear, “It has already begun to. It will be beautiful.”
After midnight:
“You just woke up?”
“No, we arrived before midnight. I slept during the drive.”
“Ah, Dad was calling you just minutes ago and you weren’t answering.”
“Oh... I left my phones in my room...I’ll check now...”
“All right. Get some sleep.”
“Did you get wet?”
“Yeah, a little.”
“It’s Agua de Mayo.”
“Ay... Oo nga!”
A message, Rest...You look better...more relaxed. I love you...
I smiled and waited for sleep.
This morning:
“Yes?”
“What’s the most painful thing a human being can experience?”
“It depends on the person----”
“For you.”
“Broken heart.”
“There... And that’s the survey question of the day...Talk to you later...”
They all said the same thing so I write a broken heart.
After:
I found myself go pale, clammy, dizzy.
I cried out just before I collapsed.
She asks, “Does she need to be taken to the hospital?”
He answers, “We’ll see. Exhausted. She just needs to rest for now.”
I woke up, whispered, “I’m sorry if I’m a burden.”
He says, “You’re not. Rest. Sleep.”
Later:
Awakened, I saw messages and missed calls. I replied to only one message saying that I went back to sleep, felt faint, just woke, still dizzy. The reply to that was a call, kindness.
I answered in kind, “Hello?”
“...Go back to sleep...”
A sleepy mumble, a smile at another sweet gesture, “Okay.”
I went back to sleep.
Monday:
“I feel like I’m going to die.”
One, “Perhaps it’s the anxiety of getting all deadlines done? Then what’s to be done after?”
Another, “Perhaps it’s just exhaustion?”
A shake of the head, “It’s not that. Nothing even symbolic. I thought it was that. It’s not. I was hesitant to talk about it, afraid that it would be dismissed. But I feel like I’m going to die soon...So, this mania for fixing things, getting it all done. I was told that I would feel it once I feel my heart break. That I would stop being frozen. Then like someone taken out of cryogenic freeze, degeneration is rapid. Dying, like that December, the clock started ticking again. It’s like that feeling that you’ve had a dream and you wake up and then it finally happens and you say that you’ve dreamt it already, that it already happened. Like if I died, everyone will be okay with it. Like what would you say?”
Another, “I will be happy. You will be at peace.”
“See? All the pieces are in place. I can step out of your chess boards.”
One keeps silent.
A laugh to both, to one, “Don’t worry, I told it to a tree. But then again, if I don’t pay attention to it...It’s like your feeling that the bottle was going to break tonight.”
The bottle of Strawberry Wine fell and shattered unopened just minutes before, the moment it was given to a laugh.
Agua de Mayo:
“So then it’s not just about the word anymore, that sound-over-image, but the sign and the sign is very tricky if you don’t know the signifier-over-signified...what each mean all changes through time. And if you don’t pay attention to what that bar dividing the two really means. Enough of the theory. You look overwhelmed. It’s just another test. Just read that book and you’ll do well...” A pause. “I want to read to you a story I wrote for the rain, that okay?”
A nod, pulls the chair closer.
I look down to the words I wrote for broken hearts and the rain and begin,
The past is past:
his choice to choose himself,
his choice to take back his life that he said once was no longer his because it was mine,
his choice to stop loving me.
I am now buried in a box (with history but still only a box). He said he has to keep me in that box because it is the only way he could still have my presence in his life. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t know me anymore, he knows I would disappear from him, and he cannot have that.
After all, he cannot have me the way I was before in his life.
He is not ready--- too many things to do in his life for himself--- to become something, someone--- time for his universe to exist--- time to let go--- to answer more of the questions he once wrote on a piece of paper---
Would I be great?
What legacy would I leave this damned world?
What am I right now?
How do I feel?
When can I be with her always?
How far can I go?
How?
What?
What am I living for?
I am dead. We are all dead.
We are all living to die.
But as I have read, a poem,
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
(It did not even matter if we were not free, if it was too late, if I chose him.) He will never touch me again. “Fight it,” he said. Fight that desire. I am calm. It is cold. More wishful thinking...but where do these things really go? Nowhere.
A clock has stopped. A lock is in place.
A clock is in place: the past is locked in memories.
It will never be allowed to spill over on time again.
I am buried in a box--- that is our future.
The present is this.
We all had our faults.
There, he finally said it, “We are done.” He found answers and love was consumed. We ate it until nothing was almost left and I almost destroyed everything for it while I waited. It had nowhere else to go but a choice and... time.
A clock has stopped.
A lock is in place.
On the first day of May, the rain will come.
The Earth will sigh in relief.
(I would have continued loving...)
A clock has stopped.
A lock is in place.
On the first day of May
Is the last day of Love.
He chose.
Finally.
I already chose.
It ends.
We begin.
“I am free,” I said.
I smile---
I look up and see---
the nod became a bow, the chair became a sobbing face covered; I hugged the bow and the sobs and the tears said, “The rain started falling.”
I look--- rain, I have been waiting for you, I thought you would never come--- and I smile again.
The tears became a forefinger and a thumb measuring half an inch, said, “...were this close.”
I answer, “Skating the edge. This one took long. A fuck-you to life’s limitations: the edges where you find answers. The edges that would break anyone. The edges that are ledges that someone would once dare to step on and then back from. The edges that are situations wherein you don’t have a choice but you learn to choose. Who really wants and has the courage or love to be that edge? Or to jump?”
Monday:
Another listens to a laugh, “It was and never is duplicity: the standard says it is. It has always been about dealing with complexity. And what-- the standard is to simplify. Fuck those standards.”
A broken heart:
A clock has stopped.
A lock is in place.
I try to remember.
A clock has stopped.
I cannot remember.
A lock is in place.
I cannot even remember his face.
Agua de Mayo:
I say to the dried tears, “Now he will live knowing some of what he can and cannot do, what he is capable of doing, what he can endure. He will fuck others. He will even love again. He will find more of his answers. Then one day it will hit him. He will panic and will call out to you. You will be there to tell him that it’s okay, that you’re there. But he knows then that it’s too late. Ah, but there’s always hope: if he knows what love is and what he can do then and if you still love him then the way you love him now.”
A shake of the head, “He didn’t know what he lost.”
I shrug, “You cannot simply cut it off. It has to run its course through the choices you make to reach its natural death. No anger, no pain, no hate. You have to have each other’s consent for it to begin and end. Now do you understand?”
A nod.
Monday:
“Which was the truth and which was the lie?”
“All of it. We all begin with what we believe are truths and in time find out are lies. I become what is necessary. Then we all finally see. I know what I am... still ruthless but kinder through the years, I suppose. And they get to find out what they are.”
Broken hearts of Strange, Little Girls:
One day she will stop loving you, too.
It will break your heart.
Monday:
A laugh, “Time is relative. What would take four years for others it takes four days for me. After all, life is---” a snap.
Agua de Mayo:
“Did you know that will happen?”
I have my arms up to the rain and my eyes are closed as I slowly spin and get soaked. I stop and answer, a smile, “You choose what happens and it happens, and what will happen, will happen. Even if I explain it, it will never be understood. But in time, in time.”
A broken heart:
I understand.
Tonight:
After reading it, he hugs me as I cry a little.
“Cry...”
I nod, silent, I hug him back, tight, “Don’t leave... Don’t die...”
“I won’t.”
Then, “It sounded sad in the beginning, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“It’s...an old woman.”
The edge stops crying as it is hugged by the edge.
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