And so it comes to pass
A nasty, biting breeze. You’re wearing a T-shirt in the chill, shaking, defiant to the very end. Five a.m. Zurich and trams in the blue twilight. You took the summer home with you to Spain, and said to me at last, “I promise.”
Promise what? Promise only that you’d tell me when, but it’s more of a promise than anyone’s ever made to me before and I lean on it much more than I should, for all kinds of decisions that such a promise can’t support. Then again, my idea of forward-looking is fretting that I might fall in love with someone when it isn’t on the schedule, that I’ve left the lights on in California and need to go back to turn them off, that my horse doesn’t fit under the airplane seat.
“You are hard to love,” you said.
I know this. I’ve known it for years. But no one’s ever articulated it, ever pierced my soul with it like so many knives from an illusionist’s arsenal. I don’t think anyone starts out that way, or desires to be difficult. Assuming you’ll be like the past is unfair to you, to myself. But I’m headshy, and I know it, and I can’t help but flinch every time someone raises their hand, even when the hand is there to embrace, not to strike.
While my fears fulfill their prophecies my heart lures me ever onward, dangling like the burro’s carrot but beating fiercely real, saying there now, send that email, “Dear Mr. Guanín, I would like to learn Spanish, can I pay you in Swiss francs or with the lurid details of my trembling intentions? I would like to be conversational but not confused, do you have any money back guarantees that in your language, I’ll find love?”
And so it comes to pass that you’ve left, and I’m left, and we’re here to sort this out on our own, but not alone, bringing an optimistic solace I never thought I’d feel.
