Leadshot Variations
Dear Jessica:
"Recall the deeds as if they're all
Someone else's atrocious stories.
Now you stand reborn before us all --
So glad to see you well.
And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you to the ground,
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends...to the dead."
Yours,
Jessica.
Though you've assured me that you are not dead to me, I'm unsure of my own position on the checkerboard. I feel like I'm teetering on a precarious edge. I feel like I'm a plastic pawn in some game you've devised in order to teach me a lesson -- or worse, to instill in me the feelings I burdened you with a month ago. I'm not sure where to go, what to say, or how to do the things I desperately need to finish. I'm attempting to figure out the parameters of you-and-I, though I'm not entirely sure there is a you-and-I, and I'm struggling to keep my head above waters completely devoid of self-possession. How do I make someone who's not "got it all figured out" speak on that same incomplete-puzzle subject?
This is not an entry grossly vague and inexact. This is precisely the type of contemplative swamp I labored through when I left your house Friday afternoon. I nearly gave up on coming over Saturday; it was too sudden a liason, though I'd wanted it more than anything. Your words after "peg me up and tear me down" were too shocking, too wanted, too heart-seizuringly surprising for me to adequately digest. I'm still having trouble accepting as fact that you still love me; I thought you too much like stone, in all honesty. The last thing I expected you to say was the word "love," and when you uttered it -- I was both terrified and thrilled. It was almost as shocking as the first time you told me, though summer has now passed and we weren't standing in front of a sleeping apartment complex.
Where does this leave me, then? I want to me there, in your room and in your arms. God, do I want to be there now. I think I do, at least. But what good would it do? If you're not sure whether you can trust me again, and if you're not sure what, exactly, comes next -- where does that leave us? I have...backed up a dozen steps and retreated into my shell. I have withdrawn the ease with which I used to call, with which I used to talk, with which I used to behave. It's absurdly late for me to be up on a Wednesday night, and yet here I remain...typing useless, voiceless, maybe invisible questions...in a manner entirely too weak for my tastes. That's how I feel, however -- "we've taken medication so we can run away from another day." I want to call you, solve something, put an end to this unsurety that, like the fish in the tank at eye-level now, continues to wriggle no matter the pressure put on it to stop. But I won't, because I have nothing to say. I have nothing new to add to the equation, really. How far can "I love you" take a conversation?
In addition: Apparently, nothing I've managed to say can take a conversation very far. I didn't call for pleasantries, I didn't call for the pathetic lump of exchanges born into existence five minutes ago, I didn't call to see how you were doing. I called because I want to put an end to the sadly juvenile way in which both you and I are handling this. Both of us have not the slightest clue as to how to handle this, that, anything. Anything! You cannot possibly fathom how utterly confused I am right now -- and it's my fault as well as yours. Though your terseness and avoidance of the subject calls into question the validity of your admission, my unwillingness to say the things I want to say doesn't speak much for my side of things, either. How do I say, "tell me what you want from me" and "tell me what I want to hear" simultaenously and in ways you'll understand? How do I admit that I only want you to love me -- but that I only ever really wanted it after you told me? How do I tell you that I wanted to forget you then as badly as I want to forget you now? You can't do this again; you can't bat me around like you used to -- the "does he really like me?" versus the "I can't stand the boy" cannot coincide in me again. Not again. I thought we'd passed all that when things grew serious...when things grew to the point of emotional maturity people our age aren't even supposed to possess yet. "We vaulted over the bullshit," remember? Now we're stuck in it. Tell me what I'm supposed to do, and what you're supposed to do, and that you really meant what you said.
"I was just kidding all the time. How can I have really died...?
Put my hands to the sky and pray for a sign if I believed in a god."
"Recall the deeds as if they're all
Someone else's atrocious stories.
Now you stand reborn before us all --
So glad to see you well.
And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you to the ground,
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends...to the dead."
Yours,
Jessica.
Though you've assured me that you are not dead to me, I'm unsure of my own position on the checkerboard. I feel like I'm teetering on a precarious edge. I feel like I'm a plastic pawn in some game you've devised in order to teach me a lesson -- or worse, to instill in me the feelings I burdened you with a month ago. I'm not sure where to go, what to say, or how to do the things I desperately need to finish. I'm attempting to figure out the parameters of you-and-I, though I'm not entirely sure there is a you-and-I, and I'm struggling to keep my head above waters completely devoid of self-possession. How do I make someone who's not "got it all figured out" speak on that same incomplete-puzzle subject?
This is not an entry grossly vague and inexact. This is precisely the type of contemplative swamp I labored through when I left your house Friday afternoon. I nearly gave up on coming over Saturday; it was too sudden a liason, though I'd wanted it more than anything. Your words after "peg me up and tear me down" were too shocking, too wanted, too heart-seizuringly surprising for me to adequately digest. I'm still having trouble accepting as fact that you still love me; I thought you too much like stone, in all honesty. The last thing I expected you to say was the word "love," and when you uttered it -- I was both terrified and thrilled. It was almost as shocking as the first time you told me, though summer has now passed and we weren't standing in front of a sleeping apartment complex.
Where does this leave me, then? I want to me there, in your room and in your arms. God, do I want to be there now. I think I do, at least. But what good would it do? If you're not sure whether you can trust me again, and if you're not sure what, exactly, comes next -- where does that leave us? I have...backed up a dozen steps and retreated into my shell. I have withdrawn the ease with which I used to call, with which I used to talk, with which I used to behave. It's absurdly late for me to be up on a Wednesday night, and yet here I remain...typing useless, voiceless, maybe invisible questions...in a manner entirely too weak for my tastes. That's how I feel, however -- "we've taken medication so we can run away from another day." I want to call you, solve something, put an end to this unsurety that, like the fish in the tank at eye-level now, continues to wriggle no matter the pressure put on it to stop. But I won't, because I have nothing to say. I have nothing new to add to the equation, really. How far can "I love you" take a conversation?
In addition: Apparently, nothing I've managed to say can take a conversation very far. I didn't call for pleasantries, I didn't call for the pathetic lump of exchanges born into existence five minutes ago, I didn't call to see how you were doing. I called because I want to put an end to the sadly juvenile way in which both you and I are handling this. Both of us have not the slightest clue as to how to handle this, that, anything. Anything! You cannot possibly fathom how utterly confused I am right now -- and it's my fault as well as yours. Though your terseness and avoidance of the subject calls into question the validity of your admission, my unwillingness to say the things I want to say doesn't speak much for my side of things, either. How do I say, "tell me what you want from me" and "tell me what I want to hear" simultaenously and in ways you'll understand? How do I admit that I only want you to love me -- but that I only ever really wanted it after you told me? How do I tell you that I wanted to forget you then as badly as I want to forget you now? You can't do this again; you can't bat me around like you used to -- the "does he really like me?" versus the "I can't stand the boy" cannot coincide in me again. Not again. I thought we'd passed all that when things grew serious...when things grew to the point of emotional maturity people our age aren't even supposed to possess yet. "We vaulted over the bullshit," remember? Now we're stuck in it. Tell me what I'm supposed to do, and what you're supposed to do, and that you really meant what you said.
"I was just kidding all the time. How can I have really died...?
Put my hands to the sky and pray for a sign if I believed in a god."
posted by Ophelia at 10:25 PM
2 Comments:
What ever your choice, whether to speak with the dead or let them rest, I am stand with you.
Matt
And I am stand wiht yuo two!
Apparently, when the two of you "vaulted over all the bullshit", you might not have realized that it went a little farther than either of you suspected. I would imagine that happens to everyone and happens a lot. It's good to see that things have progressed significantly since then.
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