you

I know you’ve been waiting for your blog entry. I mean, what does it take to get famous around here anyway? Flowers and Mediterranean dinners and wine country getaways and the sleepy, sincere question, “Don’t you think you deserve to be treated well?”

“Inamorata,” you wrote one day to me, and I pushed back with all of my female principle and stoicism, still panging from the bitter rebuff of a two-thousand mile romance. I flew from you then, and from everyone, seeking meaning across northern prairie and wood and in small towns where life is notably less complicated. I didn’t find what I was looking for when I scoured the countryside for it, but remarkably, it was still there waiting for me when I got home.

“I just want you to be happy,” you said, your eyes all shades of blue and gray like dusk on the vineyards behind our room. You propped yourself up on your elbows on the floral patchwork quilt, gazing at me, genuinely. A fuzzy red teddy bear embellished with metallic thread slumbered next to you, and the candid sincerity of your expression dizzied me. I felt like B’s rescued shelter cat, who, when offered a cut of steak in the middle of the living room floor hid in the corner and peered at it suspiciously. The cat and I both knew that nothing in life was free, or did we?

“No,” you said laughing, leaning over my shoulder, “that’s not the only reason.” Two pieces of blonde hair fell down over your right eye, absorbing the colors of the piercing lights that flashed in time to the music. We were both red and blue and sparkling white in the darkness, reclining on velvet cushions in the corner of the party. “You’re creative and your writing is amazing.” I looked down at my shimmery red shoes, Dorothy in the Land of Oz hoping she’d never have to leave and go back to her black and white world of Kansas. Crimson, I couldn’t accept the compliment lest I somehow used them all up and they ran out when I needed them the most. I hoarded them instead, admiring them in private when no one else was looking.

Sometimes I just stare because I think I can catch you bluffing it, because that’s what people do, but you never are, an unalloyed smile always on your face that starts at the edges of your mouth and rises up through your cheeks until it touches the corners of your eyes. And then there is this minor truth that came to me after a long time, and that is that the best way to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.