Ever speculated on how much of a bad idea something would be, then jumped off the bridge anyway, inevitably changing everything and quietly saying “oops” under your breath, almost as if you meant it?
I’m beginning to think it’s simply how I run things. I can’t escape my name, my natural anthem of love’s disaster. Missing chances to death, walking strong and emotionally detached, I want it to end so much that it hurts bone deep. I feel like a stranger to my own body, to my own needs and choices and liabilities. Upon my breath, Sunday morning I was flying enough to let my impulses die a steady slumbering death, but today, in the smeary hour of midnight, I didn’t bother to keep myself in check.
Wearing myself out with all this sticky importance, I was in my element Saturday, not a visitor. Usually I feel somewhat out of context, a tourist in my own country, but stomping around in work boots and a corset was utterly perfect. This was the first year in five that I was also a visible performer. Pyrotech, dancer, different clothes, different steps. Tiny changes and all smiles. I almost kissed someone when they walked into a room. The partner impulse there and whole, downloaded entire into my frame without thought. Familiar and strange. I almost ruined the edges of my heart.
(Today my feet are criss-crossed with black electrical tape, my answer to the common plaster. In one place, it’s possible to see bone where I wore through my foot. Poor little toes, they will recover, but the body politic, it is not happy.)
I said I was planning on getting a good night’s sleep last night, but subtext occurred instead. I went to bed near five a.m. full of double-meant conversations, explanations slipped between words. It’s been going on all week, all before too. Supportive people, my hand being held, a place to fall to if I need it. It’s terrifying, this encouragement. I’d forgotten what it’s like.
(The mad poet, the awesome-sauce Mike McGee, wants the world to see this.)
