us
Sometimes I think about when we were both young. You were already fifteen years old when I was born. And you were a bruised, whiplashed boy, bearing the scars of your father’s uncontrollable demons on your broad, brown back.
I was a kid… dreaming of my future within the chaotic ruination of my mother’s insanity and my father’s violence.
I dreamt of living a cool life. A life with no room for the mundane, or fighting over sex, or money, or ironing. No tight lipped kisses and mini-vans. No fast food and church on Sundays. No. My life would be full of music, and candles, and porn. My man wouldn’t wear a suit or a uniform or a phony professional smile. He would wear leather and big black boots. He would be dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark body, dark circles around his eyes. He would be a monster to everyone but me, his scary crazy little princess. He would ride me on the back of his motorcycle really fucking fast, and we would get drunk every night and fuck all day. We would do that forever, we would be artists. Everything we would do would be art.
My mother doesn’t exist anymore. So much for not becoming my mother. She didn’t even become my mother. She expired. God paid mercy to us both.
This isn’t about losing my mother. Or you losing your boy, or your wife.
One day I realized you were my one and only. That was the day I first saw you. No words. You didn’t even look at me. You were getting on your bike. This is the beast I was searching for. You ripped my pants right off of me that first night. And we didn’t even fuck. And then I came home one night, and you made this kind of love to me. It was elegant and violent and sloppy and pristine and perfect and horrible. It was hysterical and unworldly, it was the entire universe flooding through our souls. And most people would make love and stare lovingly at each other, amazed and in love. But we didn’t. We laughed and said “that was great.” and fell asleep with our backs to each other.
Because that is us. That is us. Our backs to each other, you a million miles away. I’m at work, or flirting with someone else. And people look on and don’t understand.
I can’t fathom infinite black space that stretches on forever. I can’t fathom you. I can’t fathom us. I sit in that unknowing. It’s the most graceful. It’s the most elegant, delicious unknowing. Yes, he’s my boyfriend. Yes, we do mundane things. But mostly we ride motorcycles at 160 miles an hour all alone on the freeway. Mostly we have sex that lasts entire days. Mostly we just cry on each other’s clothes, and hold each other, knowing that we are in an unknowable love that floats above our mundane expressions, like ether. An unknowable, dark, infinite love that floats above us while we sip our morning coffee together, you working on your crossword puzzle, and me blabbing on about work and my most recent obsession. But occasionally you’ll look up from your newspaper. And I will stop talking. And we will laugh at each other. What does the rest of the world know? Not us.
No… they couldn’t possibly know us.
