 As Though You Were Absent |
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I logged into my work on Friday morning just to check on things even though I took the day off to help with last minute arrangements for the funeral. There were reminders of computer classes and a message from Toni and some spam. And there was an email from S. I have not spoken to or heard from him in more than five months. It was 7:30 in the morning, and I was barely even awake. I had cued up a playlist in Winamp to keep me company while I cleaned the house in anticipation of my cousin Campbell coming to stay with me and "This Shirt" by Mary Chapin Carpenter was playing. This shirt is the one I left you, and when you gave it back, it had a rip inside the sleeve where you rolled your cigarettes. It was the place I put my heart, now look at where you put a tear. I forgave your thoughtlessness, but not the boy who put it there ... "Shit," I think is what I whispered as I stared blinking at the screen. I took a deep breath and opened it. -----Original Message----- I just sat there at my computer, my knees hugged to my chest. "Shit." Just ... "Fuck." Just then "Comfortable" by John Mayer started to play. And excuse me, but I am only human. And the tears came, and came, and came, and I put my face onto my knees, and both dogs approached me and put their chins on the chair, and I patted them absently, and I listened to the song, and I remembered. And I was angry and grateful and sad all at once. And I thought thoughts of forgiveness and bitterness and resolve. Resolve not to reply. Because there is nothing to say. Because there is too much to say. ("Comfortable" is a song my brother plays amazingly well. [He made $500 playing the other night in a college bar. "Kinda makes you want to quit your day job, huh?" he grinned.] I learned it from him, and I've always thought it was John Mayer's best song BY FAR. "Your Body Is a Wonderland," my big fat ass. That song is a crock of shit. My love affair with John Mayer ended a long time ago, mostly because I saw him performing on television and making hideous diarrhea faces that horrified me on such a deep internal level that I could no longer take him seriously, but anyway, I've always loved this song, even when it didn't mean anything to me personally other than being a pretty, melancholy, aching song.) That this song was playing when I received that email, my first contact from him in months -- granted, I explicitly told him never to contact me again -- kind of kills me. The ache in my heart. JESUS. There are endless songs that make me think of S., that tell some or all of some or all of what he meant to me. It's been easier for me just pretend he doesn't exist. To forget that he ever did. I asked my friends months ago if they should ever run into him or hear anything about him not to tell me, because the more distance and space I could put between us, at least in time, the more I felt like I was surviving perfectly fine without him. Which I am. I mean, I really am. But sometimes, in my dreams, S. misses me. And from now on, I think, if I dream that he is missing me in his dreams, and if he sings a song to me, this song, about a man remembering a woman he loved once (because it just makes me feel better to think that, okay, even though I'm sure he and and his prepubescent Ecuadorian lover are blissfully happy and he never gives me a second thought), will be one of the songs that he sings. And as for me, the song I sing to him in my dreams is this poem. It's about, to me, distance and space and absence and a moment of contact through that space that brings both sorrow and relief. A momentary moment is all it can be, though, because now I must try to forget it. Even though I know that I'll remember. I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
As all things are filled with my soul
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
And let me talk to you with your silence
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
© Copyright 2003 elb |
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