I Will Wait

“Bonedriven” from Bush’s second album, Razorblade Suitcase.  I grew up on this band.

I know there’s no reason for things like this.  No higher order, at any rate, than cause and effect.  But I like to weigh things, proves they’re real, maybe– being heavy.  I took a wonderful trip last year that ended in a speeding ticket.  Without that the memory of the trip would have no roots, no grounding, no solidity.  It may have floated up in the wind and been gone.  So having you here, your back to me when you read this, probably, downstairs while I write.  What we face is perhaps that weight that will make this real.  I told you very rarely do these things go perfectly, do they meet your expectations.  And so this is what we get.  A series of decisions that you can line up if you want, you can string together, but the end result is nothing you have control over.  I get you heartsick, calling me a stranger there in the tiny twin bed, already hot.  You get me pensive, worried, quiet.  I have to struggle with knowing that all I can do is let time pass, prove to you that I am myself.  Fight myself, in a way.  Your image of myself.  You probably imagined I’d sleep more.  I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I’ve slept less and written more in the past two days than the three before them without you.

I was able to nap for an hour with you, then I got up and wrote a while and when I laid back down you let me hold you.  It’s these things that I have to cling to.  Because I know you’re unsure, and I know that I can’t force anything.  I went for a midnight swim and the water was cold and the air, too.  The moon and the big palm by the pool.  The light turned off as I was getting out.  I’d hoped maybe I’d catch you on the stairs, coming out, maybe even just to sit and watch.  But when I got upstairs you were still asleep.  There’s very little I have to hold in my hands right now.  It’s been a long day, and I have a feeling I won’t sleep more than a few hours until this is settled.  Maybe not even then.

I use my words like tools, like weapons.  Two things I’m finding that my father gave me: the need to do something, anything, in the face of a problem; and insomnia.  Put those two together in a situation like this and I’m utterly useless with a lot of time on my hands.  Writing this is something like stabbing myself in the back.  Who is writing this?  The me with his fingers on the keyboard, or the me you want, the me you want to call?  Does it prove we’re one in the same?

I am tired.  And I might sleep if I can settle these drowned butterflies.  I will fight the urge to try to hold you.  I will wait.