Poe-Trees

Intimacy

I had tried to read the dictionary entry on that curious man to my son—we were after something on Raleigh— but he was impatient, and rightly so.

It happened months ago, the boy is with his mother now but I remembered the name: Ramouz— and a poem began to take shape.

2. Sigh it into her mouth, wedged in between teeth and tongues. Don’t even let your lips move when you say it, ever so lightly, into the air. Maybe it was just an exhalation of ecstasy.

3. Buy her flowers. Buy her chocolate. Buy her a teddy bear, because that’s what every romantic comedy has taught you. Take her out to a nice restaurant where neither of you feel comfortable and spend the whole night clearing your throat and tugging at your tie. Feel like your actions are more suited to a proposal than the simple confession of something you’ve always known.

4. Whisper it into her hair in the middle of the night, after you’ve counted the space between her breaths and are certain she’s asleep. Shut your eyes quickly when she shifts toward you in askance. Maybe you were just sleep whispering.

5. Blurt it out in the middle of an impromptu dance party in the kitchen, as clumsy as your two left feet. When time seems to freeze, hastily tack on “in that shirt” or “when you make your award-winning meatballs” or, if you are feeling particularly brave, “when we do this.” Resume dancing and pretend you don’t feel her eyes on you the rest of the night.

6. Write her a letter in which the amount of circumnavigating and angst could rival Mr. Darcy’s. Debate where to leave it all day – on her pillow? In her coat pocket? Throw it away in frustration, conveniently leaving it face up in the trashcan, her name scrawled on the front in your sloppy handwriting. Let her wonder if you meant it.

7. Wait until something terrible has happened and you can’t not tell her anymore. Wait until she almost gets hit by a car crossing Wabash against the light and after you are done cursing at the shit-for-brains cab drivers in this city, realize you are actually just terrified of living without her. Tell her with your hands shaking.

Go with the one who loves you biblically. The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck. Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle the way old grief is gentle. 

Love the love that is messy in all its too much, The body that rides best your body, whose mouth saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips, whose tongue translates the rock language of all your elegant scars. 

Go with the one who cries out for her tragic sisters as she chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes. 

Go with the one who resembles most your father. Not the father you can point out on a map, but the father who is here, is your home, is the key to your front door. 

Know that your first love will only be the first. And the second and third and even fourth will unprepare you for the most important: 

The Blessed. The Beast. The Last Love,

which is, of course, the most terrifying kind. Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us? Can reveal to us our true heart’s end and its thirty years spent in poverty? Can mimic the sound of our bird-throated mothers, replicate the warmth of our brothers’ tempers? Can pull us out of ourselves until we are no longer sisters or daughters or sword swallowers but, instead, women who give and lead and take and want and want and want and want, because there is no shame in wanting. 

And you will hear yourself say:

Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours. And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you and tuck them deep inside myself until they are ready to be the children of such a royal and staggering love. Or you will say: 

Last Love, I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless, have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself at the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet. 

Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you, let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end. Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you. Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you. Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you. Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you. Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you. 

Last love, I have let other men borrow your children. Forgive me. Last love, I once vowed my heart to another. Forgive me. Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room and come out empty. Forgive me. 

Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me. Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me. Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me. Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me. 

Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen. Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen. Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.