It is morning and I am writing
about a book from 1940 about sex
and men and women and the rules
that no longer apply to me
and maybe never did.
And suddenly it’s 1997, July:
I’m remembering that first time
he and I swam across the pond
together — my 23 to his 31.
How right about in the middle
I stopped to catch my breath
and, treading water, looked at him
and said, gravely,
“There is something you should know.”
He waited, eager to know
all the things about me
that would seal some agreement
we didn’t even know we were making.
(I look up from the writing
for a moment at my wife,
who is stretching side to side,
her naked body soft and mine,
the undone tree inked on her back —
a reminder that
we don’t always finish what we started
in the way we planned way back when.)
I swim at this pond all summer long,
and sometimes, when I am floating
on my back in the middle,
I remember that moment
when I told him I’d been bulimic.
I shake my head in such a way
that you wouldn’t even notice,
marveling at the way life
unfurls and we, with it, as if thrust
from the unfolding itself
into the thing behind the thing
that I didn’t know yet
and so didn’t say:
“You’re really nice,
but I’m really gay.”
I really love how there are unfinished and unspoken currents here … as if the mysteries and secrets must still be kept, or perhaps they haven’t finished setting roots, or have simply already been cleaved and have decomposed and composted back to the earth – a grounding in its own way. Just delightful :)
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Love ” The thing behind the thing…that I didn’t know yet.” I think we can all relate to this – learning more about ourselves and revisiting our personal past with new eyes.
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I’m fucking in love with this. Read it at least five times already. Thank you.
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I love your writing.
This piece really was one to read over and over.
A puzzle to be worked on.
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Beautiful! Flows & haunts like the best kind of song………..
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i love this piece!! I am reading it to my partner tonight. It makes me think about my own things behind the things that I don’t know yet…
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when will you start sending these to NYT and Huff Post? LOVE
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