Eithne

“F**k.”

No, I chastise myself, we are not going to get used to that word. We plan to work with children. We have to keep that word sacred.

“F**k, f**k, f**k.”

I gently bonk my head on a nearby tree, gently, like a tap to let a child know he’s overstepped.

Why are you so gentle with me? I ask myself. I’m trembling with  rage at myself. Heart hammering like bellows to a fire. Why don’t you hurt me? Punish me? Why have you already forgiven me?

---

“What’s the best thing?” Mama asks.
I pause, think, “I’m not qualified to answer that question.”
“No, What’s the best thing in -your- life. Right now.”
“No, I can’t answer that.” A breath. “Recently when I pray, I pray for ‘the best.’ Whatever it may be.” A breath. “I’m sick of asking for things and having them manifest exactly how I asked for them - and it not being enough. These days I’m trying to trust that there is a best and I can’t see it.” A breath “Like right now Eithne told me last night about how she’s falling in love.”

Mama makes a sympathetic noise. “Who?”

“A really great man who’s her age and perfect for her and absolutely should be the human in her life, and I have to trust that that’s the best thing. She was probably too valuable to be a girlfriend anyway.”

---

I settle down in my seat at the poetry reading eight minutes early, and begin reading my driver’s manual.

“Bicyclist cannot carry packages unless the rider can keep at least one hand on the handlebars at all times.” I wonder who’s responsible for that law? What’s the story? This book would be a lot more interesting with stories.

Eithne walks past looking at the gallery along the wall. I whisper her name twice before she hears, and turns, and comes over and hugs me.

“You came!” and then “I’ll be back, I’m just going to . . . “

“Parents are responsible for teaching their children about traffic and bicycle safety,” my driver’s manual informs me. “Children cannot see things to the side as well as adults. They also have trouble judging the speed and distance of moving cars and they lack a sense of danger. Remind them how important it is to look out for themselves and their own safety. Teach them to always be aware of their surroundings.”

I’m aware of the man behind her out of my peripheral vision. I knew he might be here.
“Have you been introduced?” she asks. We both say something at once about maybe meeting before.
“Cian, right?” I say as if I hadn’t spent the entire morning stalking his Facebook and learning as much about him as I could.

She sits between us. Her voice, deep but quiet, doesn’t carry as she murmurs something to him. I can only assume he can’t hear our conversations either, as if she spans two worlds.

My old nemesis from the Evergreen writing center is here, and Eithne goes over to her and they talk loud enough for me to listen in. They wind down and the poetry starts.

The first is a slam poet by training, a street poet now. He starts with a voice like thunder and I can’t remember any of his words but he makes my heart sing. He talks about how he sits out on street corners with a typewriter and writes poems for strangers. He tells how they cry, and laugh. How a perfect stranger opens up to him and shares the emotion of it.

The vulnerability of it.

The second poet isn’t as good a speaker, but she’s hushed and slow and she gives me time to remember the words. She talks about grief, and I’m swept back into Shine as I always am when grief comes up. She talks about the sea.

By the end I appreciate her quiet over explaining. I have her words echoing around inside my head, and a few have even made their way down to my heart.

I hug Eithne goodbye, nod to Cian, and make my way outside.

---

When I get out of Eithne’s beat up blue truck, and she gets out to hug me as she always does, she says: “Thanks for putting up with my crazy.”
“Thanks for being crazy,” I murmur into her shoulder.

Ten minutes later, inside, I reconsider.

“I think my goodbye came out wrong - not ‘Thanks for being crazy’ but ‘Thanks for trusting me with what bits of your life you share.’ I'm always honored to be included.” I message her. Adding a heart at the end.

“Well when you said that, I thought ‘I am definitely keeping the people in my life who thank me for being crazy,’” she messages back.

“I don't care what I am to you, as long as I get to participate in that wild life of yours,” I say, and in that moment it’s perfectly true.

---

I make my way to the sea rather than home, hoping I’ll be alone there. There’s someone with a flashlight sweeping the beach on the far side, but they’re a ways off. The tide is low and I listen to the beat of it, unsure why I’m here.

I need to pee so I make my way under the dock. It’s dark, and my eyes aren’t adjusting, and I keep tripping over things. I stay there at the waterline in the dark.

My body starts convulsing with dry sobs. I whimper. I grab my rock and hold it there in my coat pocket as what passes for crying goes by. I don’t know why.

Trust yourself. You don’t need a reason. You can just feel, I tell myself, but my mind won’t stop working. It’s linked to the poetry somehow.

I notice bioluminescence flickering on the edge of the water and crouch to catch one but it moves too fast. I cup some sea water and smear it on my face as makeshift tears, and then I’m shaking again, curled over a little.

It’s okay, I tell myself, you’re allowed.

The flashlight bobs closer and I stay quiet and still. It’s a young woman. She’s intent on the ground but occasionally the light will flash up and I imagine she could see me here if she were really looking. She’s blocking the entryway.

‘What are you doing here?’ I imagine her asking me.
Crying, but also enjoying the bioluminescence. What are you looking for?

She moves further in and pulls out a shovel and begins digging. I sneakily make my way by her and she doesn’t hear me over the sound of the waves. I note the spot she’s digging in case she’s burying treasure, make my way along the water far enough away, and hurl my rock as hard as I can out into the ocean where it makes a barely audible sploosh.

Then I head back up into the light.

---

There were moments in the poetry reading that were painful. New painful, not the old well-watered pain of grief which came up so many times as strong words carried them up.

The first was when the poet said “Love is death.” That’s your line, I thought, turning towards Eithne to share the joke of it, to see her wide smile and maybe a stifled laugh. I even raised my hand towards the curl of her back as is my custom.

And my hand stopped, and I turned away because he was there and I couldn’t give her a tender gesture could I? It might give him the wrong impression. Then the moment was over.

Later words echoing hers, I saw him bend in, hand against her arm, murmuring the connection, the -I see you-  that I wanted to. It’s for the best, I reminded myself. Trust. Surrender.

---

I find myself getting angry as I walk towards the fountain. First sad, now angry? Why? You can be angry without a reason too, I tell myself - so gently.

There’s a young woman at the fountain making a phone call. I steer wide of her, staying where she can see me. I pause at the fountain to offer two pennies - then, two not being the correct number, a quarter goes to the goddess too.

“Lie without hesitation for others. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. Lie without hesitation for others. Lie without hesitation for others. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. . . ,” I mutter angrily all the way up the stairs.

Then: “There is a way my fingers get, when slicked with a woman’s desire . . . “ “P*****s pressed between Jean legs and hidden under skirts all over.” “Not the Hunger that shames Men, but the love that redeems them.” I can’t remember the whole poem and it bothers me.

I head up to the Episcopal church and make my way to the maze. I’d planned to just go stand in the center - but I can’t, I have to walk it, round and round, never stepping over a brick, in the slow walking meditation you must take with mazes.

“. . . Lie without hesitation for others. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. Lie without hesitation for others. Lie without hesitation for others. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself. . . . “

“. . . And it makes a horned man of me.” “Like rich soil waiting to be planted even though I’m wearing shoes.” “Like cashmere soaked in warm wet blood, and it makes a horned man of me.”
I still can’t connect it all right.

I finally find myself in the center where I stand.

Maybe this is about Eithne, I think. It seems likely.

This is the first time my heart has been open since that night, I think. That seems likely too.

First time, and you’re still alone, still can’t share, I think. I don’t like this at all.

I’m thinking of the night I accidentally self induced Ecstasy, and couldn’t close my heart again. The last night I had sex, and the night when everything began to break.

I hope I’m not repressing everything and it’s just in times like these that it comes up, I think. That would be a sad price for my eternal optimism and calm.

Then I pause because I hear chanting, like gregorian monks. They’re singing in the chapel. I listen and breath. Maybe I uncoil a little. The service ends and people leave. One woman walks past me into her office. If she’s surprised to see a young, leather-coated satyr in her Labyrinth she doesn’t show it.

I pull out my phone to read the poem I’ve been struggling at, and find it giving me an error message over and over again. Why are you doing this to me? I ask. I don’t get an answer, so I sing a Horny Thorny Woman instead. It shares a few themes.

I begin to walk out. Is that the story then? We’ve decided? I’m feeling all this about Eithne? The sorrow at her not coming to me, the anger at my inability to surrender to this thing that is clearly for the best?

That’s the story.

Well, why don’t you do something? She’s not the only one who can manifest things. You have magic.

And yet somehow, I never will. I believe myself possessed of the capacity to bend the very pattern itself and yet I am held to my rules. This seems perfect somehow as I walk the labyrinth, never stepping over a brick. I could walk out at any time, but instead I follow the labyrinthine pathway outward. It ends too soon.

I leave my second rock on a bench and head home.

---

“Lie without hesitation for others. Speak nothing but the truth for yourself.” What about when your truth inconveniences another? What about when your truth is “I love you,” but what they need to hear is, “I don't care what I am to you, as long as I get to participate in that wild life of yours.” She doesn’t need more doubts, but it’s also not true all the way anymore.

I care. I care a lot apparently.

But I still want to participate in that wild life of hers.