A moon in my palms

September 12th, 2007

(From Brittle Lights)

Perhaps there was no other way for things to happen but this. Years after everything ended I think back on what we once were and cannot imagine what life must have been like back then. It seems so far-removed from this life I’m living it might as well have been a dream, or someone else’s love.

I still remember, though. I remember what it was like to watch your heart unfurling before me like the wings of a bird learning to fly. I remember those first few words — oh, I am a song in the night! — and way my fingers trembled the first time they found your palm. I remember how you used to turn away, just the slightest movement, when I drew near; I remember how you dipped your head and lowered your eyes whenever I looked at you, as if you could not bear my gaze. I remember, I remember, everything I could not say and everything that perhaps you wouldn’t say. And I remember — so vividly it pains me — the hole you made in my heart and the years (and failed love) I spent to heal it.

Mostly, I remember that the dream we dreamed didn’t last.

We are past blame now, past pain, and this is why I can write about us. I cannot say whether it was a beautiful dream or not, only that it taught me to sing and write poetry and weep and run, laughing, through rain. Only that at times I thought I could see your soul, and it was like a shard of the moon against the dark blue longing of the night. Only that when it ended there were nights I would go out and look at the sky, trying to find beauty in a world that had suddenly lost all sanity and sense.

Sorrow is a wise teacher, but I was too reckless a student. From pain I took the strength to raise myself above the broken pieces of that dream, and I– I learned hardness and suspicion. I learned to steel myself against compassion. I learned — because I was foolish, and young, and wanting — to break hearts as you had broken mine.

Years later I still don’t know what I did to you, what I ever meant. What I do know is I couldn’t bear seeing your pain, because after everything I had been through I no longer had the capacity to be kind. Not to you. Not, perhaps, until now, one year after I (or he) recovered my heart.

And now when I remember I am struck to the core by regret. Perhaps there was no other way for things to happen, perhaps it could never have been more than a dream. Perhaps you were too afraid and I too hopeful and the shock of waking up too terrible to bear. But perhaps I could have learned what it is like to lock doors and what it is like to open others; how to close one’s hand and feel glass shattering like so many frozen fragments of rain. Perhaps I could have listened and at least have made a fitting end — perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps you were too gentle. Perhaps I was too strong.

I will never know, nor will you, what could have happened; in a way I’m glad the possible futures are so out of reach, given the inevitability of our end — there could have been no other ending. Neither will I know what I was to you, or indeed what we were — it’s just as well. All I can give you, even now, is this truth: yours is a rare if fragile spirit, and the years could not have done anything to dim its luminous beauty any more than they have diminished your capacity for good. That much I know, and that much I can give. It is a little thing, a handful of words, but it will have to be enough.

I wrote once, “Everything I wanted to give I have kept.” With this I am done with keeping, and consign my memories to the night and to the rain.

Entry Filed under: thoughts