SWALLOW

I am thinking about our disastrous Italian adventure.  Rome.  Firenze.  Pigeon with truffles and the blood red orange juice, the pizza gobbled as we devoured the sidewalks.  We ate instead of talking.  As long as lips were busy with gelato, with the little gold wrappered candies… As long as.  Then.  We.  Didn’t.  Have.  To.  Talk. 

I am trying to remember how it felt to hate someone as much as I hated you.  Your weepy eyes.  Your little boy insecurities, and how much you needed me.  I wanted to play you the tape inside of my mind.  The one from that year before we found ourselves together trying to make the best of a vacation planned too early.  Because it was over before we even packed our suitcases.  But you knew that, didn’t you?

So back to that tape:  the insanity of the two of us in the same room.  You wouldn’t touch me until I gave up trying to get your attention and left.  Only then would you follow and catch me, fold me into your stomach and swallow. 

Then one morning I woke up at your mother’s house and you had made me breakfast.  Bacon and eggs.  Strawberries for garnish.  GARNISH.  From nothing to a fucking garnish.  You had decided to love me.

Five minutes too late.  With things like these, the timing is just beyond us.  Maybe we could have backed up, started over, met in the middle.  I don’t know.

Fast forward:  you had decided to love me.  I was simply too dumbfounded to not let you. 

After Italy, I met you sometimes in cafes.  You would stare, your eyes welling with tears and I grew more and more indignant.  How dare you?  How dare you decide to love me now? 

In a dirty hotel room I made love to you for the last time (but not really) and left to meet my friends at a bar across town.  I tried to shake your smell off my clothes, to forget the things I said and did (that we all say and do) while scraping the bottom.  Trying to get out, yet refusing to look up.  Squirming around, paralyzed.

You finally moved away one day.  I must admit, I was surprised.