She

Writing about a breakup, and the illusionary images of the woman that keeps haunting me.

As I sit waiting I suddenly see you dancing. Music beats out of the surrounding stereo system, something popular I’m sure I’ve seen you dance to before. You pull me up and I watch us dance together, twirling, laughing. The music ends and you end up with your back against me wrapped up in my arms. I feel you against my chest, so vivid, so real as you fade away.

I catch glances of you around corners, in darkened hallways, going out of doors. I see you in the corners of my eyes, as they grow misty and tired. I feel you come up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder, wrapping it around me and letting me lean back into your breasts. Then I am falling, backwards, resting on an illusion, not real enough to hold my weight.

Real enough to hold my mind. I used to think we made the gods. Now I know they come and we make sense of them. I cannot convince myself I have made this image that haunts me, the real woman a state away in a city I’ve known only once.

She twirls, no body to hold her back, no gravity to constrain the silk that spins around her. Intangible but physical in her intangibility, she spins, weaving me into her mythos as I stand unable to turn away, unwilling to embrace my illusions. Unsure what comes next.

It doesn’t hurt to see her here. That’s good I think. If she’s an illusion made to comfort me she’s doing her job. If I’m beyond her enough seeing her image doesn’t hurt that’s good too.

Who are you that you linger in the corner of my eye?

---

A month after the break up she finds another man. I know this, but it’s finals and I’m moving and I push it aside. That week at dance she brings him, and I see them dancing together. Two songs before he goes to sit by the door. I dance grief that night, dance the betrayal of “I need to be my own right now” mirrored with this man. Dance why he’s worth so much more than I. Dance self hatred and self deprecation. Dance anger at her, anger at life. Dance understanding, forgiveness, and love. Dance all of them at the same time, a roiling pot in my belly of emotions without end.

After a while I notice how close to me she’s dancing. I move to the other side of the room, and she follows me. Never close enough, but always within line of sight. I watch her out of the corner of my eye until I realize that she’s dancing holding, and support. For me.

Get away from me! I dance. I don’t need you! You left me, it is not your place to dance my healing. Your dance rips me apart, the sight of you makes me ache. Go away!

She keeps dancing there. I cross the room trying to dance a no, and she follows me - subtle, quiet, unobtrusive - not obvious enough I could confront her, just a feeling I’ve learned to trust. We dance this way until A’s twin comes in, bouncing and borrowing, wanting to dance. I don’t want to dance. Surrounded, I dance defense and “back off” and “no” until I’m ragged. When the music ends and the circle finishes I flee.

As I come out the doors I see Will at the smoker’s pit. He’s lost a lover lately, and we hug whenever we meet. It’s an unspoken comfort I always look forward to.

"Pan!" He shouts my name. I go towards him. We hug. “Here” he says, handing me a little party plate of cheesecake.

I don’t eat sugar. I don’t eat dairy. “Thank you,” I say and take it and eat it, and in that moment it is exactly what I need.

---

I find you in my dreams too. You’re a confusing character there, always unsure of your place or if you’re even supposed to be there. We’ll make love and I’ll wonder if something is wrong, as if there’s a reason I don’t do this anymore I can’t quite recall.

In the morning I remember. I lie there for hours, unable to move - too tired to get up, and eating not seeming important. The importance in every image of my dream recalled.

The night before our first date I had a dream where we were flirting, I followed you into your room and you leaned against the wall, inviting me to stand close.

“ . . . Something, something, my husband” you said. I looked at your finger and with a sinking stomach I realized you were married. I told you about it later and you laughed. Not that, not that for a long time.

When you are present in a room I always know you’re there. This presence has begun to linger until just now I know you’re sitting on my bed behind me as I write, but I dare not turn around lest you leave. You are not my woman. You are not owned or bound but rather free, unringed. I would have married you, and I think you knew that. I think it frightened you, I think it was all too much. But in the image I hold of you is forever dancing, always wandering. I would not have held you back.

But you with the body - you of the physical form that does not sit behind me, but sits in another city with another man. Perhaps dancing with a body was hard enough.

---

When I tell the future I tell two futures, one is real, and the other is a fairy tale. The woman on the bus who complimented me on my sword. The woman I’m too shy to go talk to, she gets off at my stop and we talk as we’re heading the same direction. That is the fairy tale. Reality would be when that same woman and I make no connection, and I feel regretful all day. When I get off the bus and she says “have a nice day” and waves, I’m not sure if I’m in a story or not. Sometimes you are. It’s good to know the rules.

I walk out of dance. It’s been a good but taxing dance. I danced with her for the first time since break up, not a bad dance but neither of us comfortable. I made altar that night and brought my sword as the central piece. On the way home I stop in the field, unsheath my sword, and practice my forms.

There are two possibilities and I know them. If this is reality it helps me center and I go home. If this is a fairytale she follows me, and comes and talks to me.

When she walks towards me I know I am in a story.

We talk a while. She’s more beautiful than I ever remember her, and when I ask what her plans are for the night, she says “nothing” and leans back, whole body inviting. I know the words and refuse them,wondering if this is what free will is like, and she leaves me practicing my forms alone.

But what is the moral?

---

Lying awake in the morning I go over our beginning. That first night when I brought you over for tea and scones and you told me about your acid trips and we went over astrology. Later when we went out in the rain and sat out under a tree in the dark, while cars briefly illuminated your face as they drove by and you played me your Ukulele and sang.

I fell in love with you that moment. It was just attraction before, but the way you stepped into the dark without hesitation. That was love.

I remember the second time when we lay out in your moon watching spot in the woods, and I was cold and asked for your body heat and when you were snuggled against me I needed to pee but was too embarrassed to say. When it began to rain we moved under a tree - are all our memories under trees? - and we nuzzled noses for at least an hour before I broke down and asked if I could kiss you. We kissed for hours until I couldn’t bear my bladder anymore and excused myself, and came back and talked into the wee hours.

I remember all the trees we claimed. Every one. The grove with the little waterfall. The path by the trail where people walked and never noticed us, the tree fort over the beach. So many long talks and languid lover’s hours spent out in the sun. The first three or four times I always needed to pee, until I began jokingly telling myself “pee while you can” before every date.

You invited me to your home in Portland and I rode my first greyhound to get there. We made spicy food and I harvested witchhazel from your yard and left a heart in a willow tree when we watched the trains. I remember playing gin rummy with toast cards with your father, and listening to tales of traveling all across the world.

When your best friend hugged me goodbye the last time she whispered in my ear “I’ll see you again.” It wasn’t a request. It was a promise.

---

After I left A, a month later I told her I was getting together with her friend G. She freaked out, and we spent sleepless nights, her trying to convince me it was a bad idea, me trying to tell her that she had no say in my choice of partners anymore. I didn’t understand.

Now I understand. To see a lover move on so quickly is more painful than I could imagine.

To spell it out, when A was in the midst of her crisis she developed a big lesion on her butt, now I’m echoing her with a hemorrhoid - what a pain in the a*s, to have to avoid being a pain. How painful to love and not feel happy for another’s happiness.

Behind me you laugh softly. Your silken presence rustling against the carpet. You can read everything I’m writing, or maybe being a hallucination you’re able to read my mind. You move towards me, dancing, feet tracing the floor with a hop and a step. You are always dancing.

You wrap your arms around me and tell me it’s time to come to bed. No! One more story! One more image. When I stop an essay in the middle it never finishes. What then?

I feel you squeeze me, arms around my chest, something in your presence suggests the support a woman gives to a man. You were everything that I wanted. Everything that I asked for.

Something that perfect doesn’t just leave.

I keep writing

---

I go to her final performance. I had heard so much about it. I said I would go. I slip in and sit in the middle of the row, far enough back I don’t think she can see me. Some of my classmates come sit next to me. Others talk to me from dance. Katie sits behind me and I pretend not to see her, and if she sees me she’s pretending too.

She has put herself central to the performances. She is there with the candle in the beginning. She is present in many of the pieces. It doesn’t hurt to see her here oddly. she’s dyed her hair, and this woman was never mine - she’s wearing her virgo mask as solidly as I’ve ever seen here on stage.

I watch. Oddly it’s not her pieces that move me, but others. A woman dancing rape. Another miscommunication. A dance with hula hoop. A dance about falling and getting up again. A dance about sacrifice and ancient gods.

Her dances are masturabatory. About nothing but themselves, and designed to draw attention to the beauty of her dance, but it’s all staged and shallow and small. She’s held in by a body and I’ve seen her really dance. What’s the point?

Then another dance comes in, Athena, an old classmate of mine - and projected on the screen behind her are butterflies coming out of their cocoons. she’s dressed in purple, and every movement, every image, echoes the goddess. I watch in growing realization of how held I am. The whole dance feels like her telling me that I am not alone. The whole dance feels like an initiation, a change over - and when I sneak out at the end. Avoiding the new boyfriend as he comes towards the stage with flowers - I know I am in a story.

But what is the moral of this story?

Appreciate what you have when you have it.

Trust takes time.

Pee while you can.

Reviews

[Sidonie Maroon]

This is so beautifully written. It's universal, I could feel your story but it made me remember my story too, and all the suffering, allure, presence that comes with loss.