I am so disturbed that I am writing on old study flash cards from undergrad with names of enzymes on them…DNA polyermase III. Imagine, in a writer’s house there is no paper for me upon which to write!
It fell on me at once as I replayed John’s words to me in my head, and I read Gibran’s words in my mind’s eye. John had loved. He said he wanted to marry ‘this one’, but he didn’t say he loved her.
“The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.”
“It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, but you have to get over him, or you’ll never be able to let anyone else in.”
Drunk off of a microbrew I didn’t even enjoy, I raced out of the bar, unable to breathe or meet anyone in the eye. How could I? Could I? Yes. I could. If I can give birth to a 7.5 pound child, I can get over a self-possessed, highly intelligent, and sincerely disturbing Bengali. I just don’t want to.
But I took his words to heart. I could blame the alcohol, my terrible New Year’s, or even the fact that I was physically in Cleveland, just miles away from him, and I couldn’t see him.
It doesn’t matter why it let some meathead disturb me the way he did in that awful bar in the warehouse district.
I just don’t want to. It doesn’t matter if I will one day, but today I don’t. I ask myself every morning, ‘Is this the day you will let him go?’ Every day, for four years, I’ve said ‘Not today.’
But oh, how things can change overnight.
*****
I am a woman obsessed. I walk down my freshly painted hallway, pressing my palms against the cool paint, then to my forehead, feeling the heat in my body, generated by reading two books which I am most certain reflect more accurately my own love story than any I’d ever read and more over, any I’ve ever written.
*****
My husband is afraid of me. When I slip off to read a novel in the kitchen, or take a bit long in the bathroom, he walks around looking for me. It’s as if he is afraid I might slip through solid concrete and go off on my own, gliding down the street, running only on the vapors of my dreams. He is afraid of me, but not the way I am afraid of the Bengali. To him I am most certainly tied, an invisible rope around my waist clinched to his trousers, afraid he’ll never notice how close I’ve been all this time.
*****
It is in this cage I live. So burned by my own fiery passion for someone else, I condemned myself to live in the cold so as never to repeat my mistake. It is no coincidence to me that today seems the coldest day of the year so far, and that I cannot seem to get warm no matter how high I crank the heat and layer on my clothes. But I cannot live this way, half of my being moving without my consent or my knowledge.
*****
I look at the pictures of her and of him. I smile. I look beautiful next to her, the bride. Where are my pictures like this? Why do I look at me next to you the way I should look at my own wedding photos? There is no family in them…no friends. I married almost entirely in secret, quickly for fear I would die before it would happen, with the minimum number of witnesses in a cold mosque. But, ever has it been that love knows not its own depths until the hour of separation…how can I be blamed in that? Should I have known this? And if I should have, how long must I suffer from this ignorance? Transform your blame into sorrow…sorrow that I’ve had to live with only your memory for so long.
*****
I feel myself and him in both lovers’ novels. Maitreyi has lost herself in him completely, and Eliade’s unable to control his feelings. The torture they simultaneously endure and create by simply being present in each other’s lives is eerily familiar. We are not entirely of our own kind, us. I suspect we are an amalgamate of these two people, both long since dead. Where are you?! I know where you are physically, not specifically, but it is as if I know exactly how many atoms compose you, and would know for certain if even one of them was disturbed.
*****
No. I say no to you, my friend. I must say no, I cannot walk away from you, not when I’ve come this close to you, not when I’ve managed finally to erupt myself from this membrane of safety I built to avoid ever feeling for you again. It was a messy birth but I am here. And as long as our hearts beat, it will not ever be too late. I have saved all my patience for this. I spend it a little every day, but I am not in fear that I will run out, not in this lifetime.
It is as she says….that to prevent such a thing from coming to its full potential, particularly because of our own short comings and fears, is a sin. Some sins take an instant to commit, others a lifetime, but the consequences are always the same. I have atoned for mine, and now it is your turn.
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