Willful blindness
A sliver of light seeps through the crack
illuminates possibilities
reveals choices made.
Hollowed out in the knowing
regret for willful blindness
things spoken too long past
self-inflicted wounds that won’t heal
breathing
breathing
the sun draped
across our entangled bodies
door half open
his eyes are closed
but I can see inside
his breath even
a hint of a smile
across his sleeping calm
Fin
This is the final section.
In reality, our relationship continued for a while later. We didn’t go to formal together. We actually stopped talking entirely for a long while. And then I went away to university. Moved to McGill. Thought about him sometimes, of course, but that part of my life was over.
Actually, when I went home at Thanksgiving he came out to see me and gave me a white rose and told me that he missed me and wanted to try again. That he loved me too much to let go. And so I went back. I’m not sure why. We talked on the phone a lot. I can’t even remember why I went back to him. It didn’t change my life all that much. I was at McGill enjoying first year with my friends, and he wasn’t a part of that. I broke up with him the day after Christmas. I remember it really clearly. He didn’t seem all that surprised, although he was obviously hurt. And then we didn’t talk for almost two years. Absolutely nothing. I saw him just before I left for Australia and got updates from Khaleed from time to time, but that was it really. I still think about him sometime. I hope that he’s pulled himself together and is doing something that makes him happy. I want to get in touch with him, but I don’t really know what the point would be. Maybe at Christmas when I go home.
Reconsider
I forgot how unhappy I was that summer after I got back from Ireland. It also terrifies me how willing I seemed to be to embrace co-dependence.
Rift
This is the second part. The little bit of added drama. The confused little girl. I can’t believe how little I knew myself then. That summer was a whirl, a dream. I know those feelings so well. Talk about not learning from the past. Well, maybe third time’s the charm?
Progression
I wrote a book for my final project for Writer’s Craft in my final year of high school. It was after everything with Ward had blown up, before we had tried to make it work again and became dysfunctional.
This is the first chapter. It also has the play I wrote in it that I somehow won Tarragon Theatre’s Under 20 for Under 20’s playwriting contest.
I just got shivers reading it. It’s funny how rereading something written so long ago can reignite those very same feelings. It’s also slightly amusing to see how little I have changed even though I thought that I had. Go figure. Turns out I’m still the same scared little girl, full of false bravado when underneath it all I’m terrified of really letting down my guard and allowing other people to really see me. I do hope that maybe one day I can change that.
I also feel similar emotions about Dom now. I was trying to explain to him that I haven’t felt this way since high school, and truly I haven’t. Especially now that I reread this, I find that I’m the same person looking for the same things. Except that the difference is, Dom somehow manages to see me even though I didn’t realise that I was letting him. It’s terrifying and amazing at the same time. And here I am writing this and I have butterflies. Goodness me.
Begin at the beginning?
Now that I’ve decided to embark upon this project of self-discovery, the task was to decide where to begin.
So I thought that I would begin at the beginning. Yes, there was love before Ward, but no, I had never really been truly in love with someone who loved me back. I can still remember some of the moments as though they were yesterday. I can remember meeting him at Steve’s party, totally stoned and incapable of having a real conversation. There were playing cards on the table from the drinking games that would inevitably go on every time the whole crew congregated at one of the “Binkley Bashes.” The light was quite dim, slightly yellow, and for some reason reminds me of the lighting in pictures of poker players. It was in the kitchen, and we didn’t even talk for long. And then a few days later I was in the library, working on a project for art class, and he came over and sat down with me. We talked and it was remarkable how that initial connection in the kitchen just sparked. It was like the air had thinned and I couldn’t get enough oxygen. The butterflies that had been lacking in my life started darting around inside me.
He told me later that he walked outside and smoked a cigarette. Bobby, who had seen us talking inside looked at him and was like, “What?”
Ward’s response: “She has a fucking boyfriend,” and with a flick of his cigarette and a shrug of his shoulders, he walked back inside.
I’ve been looking through some of what I wrote that year. These poems struck me as something I might post as a first hint of how I felt.
Tiny drops of hope
Fill the ducts behind my eyes
Now overflowing
The sun in my eyes blurs my vision of his shadowed face:
His expression revealing his soul.
I can see in his eyes what I saw there before
And I allow myself to breathe once again.
