I made this giraffe I named Henr(y/i) for Genevieve for Christmas, since she told me not to spend money on her. Got 24 gauge galvanized wire from Home Depot and sculpted Henry from scratch. He looks like a giraffe, and stands on his own four feet. I'm mildly proud.
It's done, now. I took this picture of Henry eating Genevieve's pink roses, and the roses are now starting to slowly shed their petals. Maybe this is a cliche, but, the petals fall singularly, as though each one has its own departure time. And the fall seems so slow, even if the distance isn't far. Like slow tears treading back to earth.
Being here is heartbreaking. He wrote me the most heartbreaking letter today. It hurt my heart to read it. It makes me cry now, to read it again. This is the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't think I've said that, the other times--
He wrote the most heartbreaking words. I want to go back, to embrace him, and help him back up, but I know that I cannot. Should not. My leaving is a different trap. Even though I know the right of it, the why of it--the pain of all the details, the memories, and the love. There is something so awfully rendering in the cessation and loss.
Just now, another petal fell.
I wish so many things. Over the years, I think I've gotten better at trying to do what's right. It feels so feeble and futile. Gathered in pain.
I want to write back, to reach back--but I'm not going back, so it would be cruel, to do any of those things. It feels like a loss of limbs. Of organs, of space inside. The brutal tightening of letting go.
I don't think I should read this letter anymore. Joni is singing, and my tears find a way down.
Last night, we went to Ad Hoc--PJ (his roommate) and his lady friend from Florida/LA were wine tasting in Napa and had made reservations for 4 and the other two canceled at the last minute. He called me to ask if I wanted to go at the last minute. Since PJ and friend were already in Napa, he picked me up from where I was.
It was and will be the last time we've spent together.
It was a great evening. Something about the dynamic of four people, great food. I had three exquisite glasses of good, good champagne while everyone sipped wine. I couldn't look at him, because when we made eye contact, it was as though all of his emotions and sadness spilled over the brim and into the empty places of my body. Painful is not the word.
The drive home was quiet. I love that drive from Yountville. There's a long patch of about 19 miles where there are no road or city lights, and the world is black, the sky that bruised dark shade.
At one lone curve, there are all these trees pitched against the sky like giraffes upturned in the dark, hiding. Like our car spotlit their shamed exposed bodies, vulnerable in the dark.
And the city, some city, in the distance, that same gleam. I love the feeling of that drive at night.
It didn't feel like he was driving me back to San Francisco, back to Genevieve's place, where I've been staying.
For this last time, the world didn't exist, and we silently and somberly were kept in our capsule, traveling together to some place, together. Heartwrenching. We didn't know then that it would be the last time.
You are right. I cannot think of a better bookend to our life together. The last night, the last moments, respectfully and lovingly--full of so much love--slowed to a stop. To the departing.
All at once I want to stop this feeling inside my chest, but at the same time, I want it to unend. I love you, I loved you, I love you.
As a child, the stories didn't tell you how you'll love many people in your life, and how all those pieces are irretrievable. You move on, you'll love again, but each piece, uniquely formed, will never form in the same way, have the same shape or pattern. Of course it's always different. I grow every day, I hope.
But maybe then, in the hardened immalleability of the empty slack inside my body, the past, present, and future pieces will never fit. A shape that has no counterpart. A place shaped by loss, by things made, shared, and lost.
Unending failure. Denial of vulnerability its comfort. Even in love, that ache, that slack, the disappearance and departure.
I want to gather what I've lost. Put the jigsaw back together, mend, and have it work.
No. I want to gather what you've lost. To help you place the pieces, to remind you that you, though wounded, can mend, will mend. I wanted to be there through it.
I hate bookends on shelves. Instead, I lay books down on their side, their sunset spines turned to me like his back in the quiet night of his room.
I remember those nights so clearly. The ache I felt then, though different, is fostered in this pain now. How I reached my hand out to trace a way; the slack doesn't slacken.
I walk differently now. Travel differently.
