This is what it is like, or what it is like in words...
Words, Wide Night
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this
is what it is like or what it is like in words. - Carol Ann Duffy
I said it. At approximately 10:30 in the morning on Saturday, July 31, 2004, I stopped New Orleans Boy on the sidewalk outside of my apartment and said "I love you." We were on our way to a garage sale that turned out to be rather disappointing and I just said it. I said it, I hugged him, and I kept walking to the garage sale because I didn't want him to think that I expected to hear the same back from him. I'll give him time to make up his mind. But, truthfully, probably not much.
I met him at the subway station at O'Hare. His plane got in early and I woke up late, so we met on the platform between two trains as I disembarked with my knitting in one hand and an empty diet Pepsi in the other. He smiled at me and I thought "Dear God. This man is the rest of my life. I will marry him. I'm going to have his babies. We will have a joint checking account and a mortgage. This man is the rest of my life." I spent the whole weekend trying to keep my certainty from him, though. Frankly, if anyone were to share that kind of information with me, I would run away and change my name. Even if that someone were Christian Bale.
How to describe the weekend without making those of you with weak stomachs vomit...It was calm. Nothing in my life is ever calm as I tend to feel purposeless and weird if there isn't a constant hurricane of superfluous action around me, but the weekend was actually calm. It was calm because of New Orleans Boy this time instead of despite him, like his last visit. The only thing that mattered to me was being with him, even when we were being quiet. When he left, I cried and I cried so much so that people on the El looked at me funny. Then again, you don't usually see a crying woman with bad skin furiously knitting on the subway.
Now comes the long wait for New Orleans Boy to decide whether or not he's ready to uproot his life in New York to come out here to a great and vast unknown. When I'm the only constant in any equation, you know you're dealing with the Devil's Own Algebra. He has twelve years in New York...twelve years, an apartment he owns, his family and all of his business contacts. In Chicago...well, there's me.
He hasn't said "I love you" back to me yet. But he will. This man is the rest of my life.
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this
is what it is like or what it is like in words. - Carol Ann Duffy
I said it. At approximately 10:30 in the morning on Saturday, July 31, 2004, I stopped New Orleans Boy on the sidewalk outside of my apartment and said "I love you." We were on our way to a garage sale that turned out to be rather disappointing and I just said it. I said it, I hugged him, and I kept walking to the garage sale because I didn't want him to think that I expected to hear the same back from him. I'll give him time to make up his mind. But, truthfully, probably not much.
I met him at the subway station at O'Hare. His plane got in early and I woke up late, so we met on the platform between two trains as I disembarked with my knitting in one hand and an empty diet Pepsi in the other. He smiled at me and I thought "Dear God. This man is the rest of my life. I will marry him. I'm going to have his babies. We will have a joint checking account and a mortgage. This man is the rest of my life." I spent the whole weekend trying to keep my certainty from him, though. Frankly, if anyone were to share that kind of information with me, I would run away and change my name. Even if that someone were Christian Bale.
How to describe the weekend without making those of you with weak stomachs vomit...It was calm. Nothing in my life is ever calm as I tend to feel purposeless and weird if there isn't a constant hurricane of superfluous action around me, but the weekend was actually calm. It was calm because of New Orleans Boy this time instead of despite him, like his last visit. The only thing that mattered to me was being with him, even when we were being quiet. When he left, I cried and I cried so much so that people on the El looked at me funny. Then again, you don't usually see a crying woman with bad skin furiously knitting on the subway.
Now comes the long wait for New Orleans Boy to decide whether or not he's ready to uproot his life in New York to come out here to a great and vast unknown. When I'm the only constant in any equation, you know you're dealing with the Devil's Own Algebra. He has twelve years in New York...twelve years, an apartment he owns, his family and all of his business contacts. In Chicago...well, there's me.
He hasn't said "I love you" back to me yet. But he will. This man is the rest of my life.
posted by Unknown at 2:35 PM
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