Nixon

Being just after midnight, this is now ten years to the day from the day I found out how JP felt about me. This is ten years to the day from "coffee", from that whispered conversation about the balcony and how he used to dream of me, wearing that miniskirt I used to wear to those parties; how he used to dream of taking me out there and putting me up against the wall. And I remember looking around that living room, the edgy squalor of Humboldt Park circa 1994, when the only ones who lived there were the real hardcore artists--I remember looking around that room and thinking it's a shame I'll never be able to come back here again... I remember him saying "all right, then...one kiss. One kiss and I won't mention it again..." And even though I knew better--I was married, after all, and he was temperamental, mercurial, out of my reach, the same man I hadn't spoken to for over two years, who pushed away my every attempt to reach him--even though I knew better, I let him kiss me. And then it wasn't "letting" him do anything; then it was ohhhh shit...this might have been a bad idea, you know?



I promised myself when I left that I would never go back.

I promised myself that despite what I'd promised him, I wouldn't call. I promised myself that I would go home and be with David and do what was right; I would look for a job and cook and clean, pay the bills and support David and work to help him set up his business. And if I wanted friends, I'd hang out with Carissa, or Gwen from work, or something.



That lasted a week or ten days; I remember locking myself in the office behind the media center at the school and calling him. I remember him being angry at me for not calling--I didn't know I was the last slim thread holding him away from Susan--and I remember him wanting to see me. I wasn't going to go--I swear I wasn't--I knew it as I left the house that saturday to go to hang out where Carissa was housesitting....conveniently about ten minutes from the Humboldt Park apartment. I wasn't going to go, and then I was suddenly there. And ever since then, for ten years now, he's been the center of everything--the love of my life, the ghost in my closet, the rationale for all my hope--and his absence has been the rationale for all my silence and my cynicism, my nihilistic shrug-and-change-the-channel little cocoon.



I loved him, and he's gone. We had made a million plans, and they died with him. He was the only other human being who has ever seen me as the person I dreamed of being, instead of the flawed little wreck I was. We knew each other, he and I; could finish each other's sentences, could speak for hours with just long looks or fingertips grazing flesh. He made me laugh and he made me think, and he made me want, too. And in the end, he made me stronger...maybe. I am not the person I was, nor have I been since the day he died. I am not the person I dreamed of becoming; though I have a life and it's a good one, it's not the life we should have had.

Poem

Magdalene Plus Ten



Magdalene

awakes this morning to a perfect sky

wanders beneath it to the market

does not, does not, does not remember Him today.



The men don’t watch her anymore;

that swaying grace now gone to fat,

the silken hair gone gray,

her shoulders sag.

Her siren eyes are silenced, avert their path

skipping over broad-shouldered barriers before her.



The rest,

of course,

remember:

the snap and sibilance

that hushes when she nears,

the eternal womens’ voice…

not today,

she prays,

please, not today.

Deaf to her, they whisper;

ten intervening years no balm.



She!—they say—why HER?

So many worthier than she,

such virtues, too many righteous to ignore…

…outrage that will not be soothed.

And look at her, they say, his holy one

today—unchurched and pagan, old and solitary,

such a waste of time…if He had taught ME, now…

Just goes to show, they say, whores will be whores…

…whores will be whores.



And Magdalene walks through their chill,

not a whore, not now

nor the saint they would demand.



They think she has forgotten

what she was and what He made her…

herself, she wonders sometimes

for what had she been saved—for this?

For bowed-head walks to work and market,

for coal-dark untouched nights,

for scorn?



They do not know

the ticking of the passing nights and years,

the empty rooms and hours, hunger

fed only on memory and scraps of miracle.



Beside her bed this night she kneels,

like them,

praying for a new messiah.



5 April 2004

(for WTW and KDC, and June)