A Story.

We’d sit by the fire, you and I, together. Sometimes there would be others, too, a friend or three to entertain the frivolity of warm destruction with us. Though, even together we were still very much alone sometimes; wordless evenings gazing into the glowing coals, these were often the nights we needed most. The fire would lick the edges of the square fireplace, for I was never able to restrain myself from making a blaze too large for your petite stonework patio. Underneath the suspended fire, grass would grow through the cracks, only to be beaten down by the heat flooding from the metal basin. It was never about the words so much as the unspoken, even the words we used often masked the deeper thoughts, but these were thoughts not for us; rather, for you or I, as they were our own to keep.

I always relished the fires we had; the knowledge that we had a companion willing to sit by us, to enjoy the silence, was sometimes exactly what we needed. The nights we did talk, however, did more for me than I sometimes care to admit. Speaking of dreams we had: a woman-and a man, respectively-that we could call our own, families to one day be had, hope for a boy or a girl or the color of their eyes, what they would mean to us-grown from each of our loins and raised by the morals we had come to accept. We would dream of a home to be had, of the different places we loved: the cool sandy beaches of the Great Lake or the corn-field plains of your own home. Our lives coming ever closer to us-college, work and a lifetime of busyness- we would dream just to forget the rest. Speaking of our loves, we would hope, equally, for the other’s success in our relational endeavors. We’d talk from dinner until one and two in the morning, later if we could convince our parents to allow it.

I always laughed at your insistence: you would never find a man; instead you planned to live in my guest house. Set apart by a black asphalt driveway or a patch of freshly mowed grass, you would live a few strides away. Watching my kids, cooking and cleaning, you’d sit by while my wife and I made love in the other building, clashing our bodies together in a married romance, repeating the same rituals every night. In retrospect it was obvious you loved me, who else could you share your life with but the same person you dreamt with. You were strong, for it must have hurt you to listen to all I wanted with someone else.

We romanced feebly for that short time, two weeks that I hadn’t even realized. It was never right though, my lips mashed against yours never made sense, never fit together. A few flashes of memory stand true: you, lying in the grass as the green reflected on the bottoms of your light brown eyes the day I first asked you out, you, gracefully falling from the hammock in an attempt to get me to kiss you for the first time, me, falling not so gracefully in front of you, the way you looked in your bikini as we swam amidst the flood of squealing kids and under-enthused adults at the local waterpark and us kissing underneath my cheap, cardboard-like pool-table. Slobbering with an inexperience passion, we made short work of our friendship, breaking the bonds and forsaking our unspoken vows to sit in peace around a fire together. Our minds were filled with hope for what we could be, searching for how our dreams could match if yours had always been in another house. Locked behind separate doors upon nightfall, we weren’t ever what either of us wanted.

Our love never waned, even though we stopped talking for that summer. Separating ways, we tried to make sense of what we had both been so previously convinced was right. I realized what I needed to with you, make up, not make out. It was not the love we had supposed it could be, but the love of friends caring for one another, despite anything else. You were my mind, my second heart that felt everything I did, we could never be one-for in that way I would be more alone than ever. Our fires taught us about each other; we shared love and lovers until the fleeting light passed on, leaving us in the cloudy black of night. As the last trails of smoke curled above, we would close our eyes to the silence and, simply, enjoy ourselves.

These were fires to remember.

#Not-So-Fictional-Afterall

"How adept we were at fumbling, how perfectly mistimed our timing, how utterly we confused energy with ecstasy."

- excerpt from “We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybek (via thelostgeneration)

28
May

1

Via: thelostgeneration

mrfb: Stuart Dybek, "We Didn't"

mrfb:

We did it in front of the mirror
And in the light. We did it in darkness,
In water, and in the high grass.

—Yehuda Amichai, “We Did It”

We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in darkness. We didn’t in the fresh-cut summer grass or in the mounds of autumn leaves or on the snow where moonlight…

28
May

5

Via: mrfb