I didn't want to take the Waterloo train.
I had gone everywhere we went, but it was done, and somehow I just couldn't do it
I had to diverge.
Had to go somewhere else.
So I started walking. Over the bridge.
The other bridge.
That one was closer but I didn't want to walk where we had walked anymore.
I think I knew I had just said goodbye to Waterloo.
I didn't want to say goodbye to anywhere else
Not tonight.
So I walked back through everything you'd shown me
Looking down.
I wanted to listen to a sad song
But I knew I wouldn't make it if I did.
So I put on my book.
A deep sonorous voice to tell me a story that didn't exist,
So that maybe I could stop existing
For a moment.
I really thought
It'd be like usual when I am sad in public.
It's part of why I walk.
I don't cry in front of people.
Especially not strangers.
Don't trust them--
Why would I?
And so I thought
If I were to take the long way home
Maybe it'd seep out of me into the cobblestones
And mingle with the stale water and bits of forgotten litter
And leave me
Be.
As I crossed the bridge, the water beckoned coldly.
I looked away
Cringed
Away.
A man pulled a woman into a kiss.
They were framed by the lights of the buildings across the water.
The intimacy of it
Cut
Me
And I began to stare at the ground again.
But the feeling
Didn't leave.
And I thought
Just get home so you can cry.
Just get back
Just hold off until you're alone.
But I thought of it-
Me
Like usual
On a bathroom floor beneath harsh lights
Muffling sobs and clutching the empty part of my chest
The one that never complains
Until it is comforted
And then
Never seems to get over such
Novel kindness.
I pictured it and I remembered
When I cried in the stall of the price chopper bathroom
In February
Sliding down the grimy wall
Trying so hard to be silent
Because there was a woman fixing her hair in the mirror.
I remembered her breathing
Listening to it and trying
To disappear into the tiles
Trying to keep quiet.
I remembered
Kneeling in my shower in the dark
Back home
I remembered letting the hot water smother my mouth and nose and I remembered
The moment I realized that I was all I had
The moment I whispered to myself- so viciously!-
Get up.
Get up or die here.
Nobody is coming.
NOBODY
IS
COMING.
I remembered and
All that grief
Swelled inside of me
And an idea started.
Small, but insidious.
An idea an echo
What if
What if I just let them all see?
And of course my first reaction was an inner derisive snort,
A quick dismissal.
Ridiculous.
But the idea wouldn't leave.
Tears had been clawing at my throat all night.
All day, really.
Two days, if I was to be honest.
I'd probably known before she'd even decided.
I kept walking, fast,
Head down
Don't look at me
But that idea
Something about the sincerity of it
The freedom
Tugged at me.
There was a moment when I decided to let it happen.
A few times, waiting at the stoplight, seeing nothing, walking when the crowd did, trusting them to keep me alive by accident,
Tears had welled.
A few times before I decided.
And my first thought then was
If you start you won't stop.
What will stop you if not shame?
How many years of tears do you have within you?
Do you
Really
Want to
Know?
I cowered from that question but then
Then there it was again
Show them
Show them all
In a world of people who refuse to feel
Feel.
Be real.
Be the only one.
Be brave enough to accept your pain
And to show it
Or it will boil you alive.
I fought it.
I fought but suddenly I thought why?
A flash of a memory, TOO fresh, slid across my vision and this time
I let my tears fall.
I was in the middle of a split street
With people on either side of me
Waiting for the light to tell us
We could flee
And I felt them slip hot and silent down my cheeks.
I didn't look to see if people noticed.
I didn't want to know.
Their gazes weren't
My problem
Not tonight.
I notched my chin a bit higher
And walked tall
Tears
Pouring down my face and trickling cold into the collar of my coat.
I walked and I thought I'd let go.
I could hear, though...
I could hear a man under the eaves of the building ahead.
He was playing guitar.
I couldn't hear what he was playing over my book.
I was glad.
I didn't want to.
I ignored him.
But as I walked by, I glanced at him, iresistably.
He was smiling
And through the din I'd tried to cocoon myself in
I heard him sing "every little thing, is gonna be alright"
And I felt for no apparent reason
My face
Just crumble.
My steps faltered and I tried to breathe
But this was real
And this was happening
And I realized quickly and gave myself to it
Resigned.
I sobbed
Silently
As I kept walking.
He saw me.
He is the only person I saw see me.
His smile
Froze
And his eyes widened just a little.
I fled
But not before I'd seen him see.
Now I am walking still
And it is cold
And the storm passed moments ago with a death rattle and a shudder,
And now I am slowly congealing,
Slowly the tears in me
Are becoming sludge.
I wonder if they will be stone
Or ice
Or maybe
Just dirt
The better to shrivel and blow away.
Right now I am walking
And I don't know what to think of what I've done tonight
I just know
That when I wake up inside again
I will want the art that came of it to have been preserved.
I will want proof,
Any proof
That this excruciating
Aching suffering
Was FOR something.
So I wrote this.
So you could know
So maybe you could make it mean something
So that when I have healed from this wound
I will have even the barest reason
To believe I should try again.