Seeing someone every day is not seeing them, not in the way of knowing ourselves, marked by a milestone on a rocky trail or a spring growing back with azaleas and pollen and a canopy of elms.
Instead the confetti of moments we’ve traveled together whirl into the patternless vortex of now and we don’t know where we find ourselves.
Yet I thought of you the other day and a painting you gave to me when we first loved. It showed a man diving into the ocean toward mermaids Who sat on an island, watching.
Next to the image were words from a Jerry Butler song, “Isle of the Sirens,” about a ship’s crewman lured by temptation. "The voices got louder They sing beautiful things in my ear I must go to that island of women I must see these creatures I hear Love is blind and desires have no fear." The captain warns him that surrendering to the siren song is a betrayal. "Keep course, cried the Captain Ignore them and let them be Straight ahead, cried the Captain Set on by and stay free Remember laws of mutiny" The man jumps anyway. "'Old man, you know nothing Of temptation And desires are heaven to me.' And off he leaped into the sea."
When you showed this to me, at first I thought I was the man, giving in to temptation. Only later did I understand that you were the man, A black woman hearing a siren song from a white man who lured her with desire and love. We know the fate of those who leap at the sirens’ lure. You broke the laws of mutiny.
Something in my daily cogito has kept this memory close, reminds me that you leapt And you’re still here.
Here we are now, in the time of COVID-19, alone together, shut out of the world, sleeping in each other’s shadow bored by each other’s demons, walking past the blank of each other’s mirrors. But I still hear that song. Can you still hear it, love? Would you still make the leap?