It Happened Like This

He was feeling so guilty after the party at Joe's, despite my efforts to console. We were huddled up in the dark and he was mustering up the strength that I have been trying to find. He reached over me and turned on the light on my side of the bed, and with tears in his eyes he looked deep into mine and said, "Emily, I love you. I wanted to tell you long ago, but I was afraid I would scare you away." And I smiled, and with tears in my eyes, I said, "I love you, too." God, to feel that way. It is just incredible.

The Flour Factory on St. Clair

I do get so down on myself from time to time. And it's usually about what I'm doing, and how I feel that it somehow doesn't measure up. And to what, and it's like today when Lizzie and Asa's mom came in for some reason and part of the experience was her updating me with everything her kids are doing andwhydopeopledothat how Lizzie is a famous artist in LA and Asa is working for a paper in the United Arab Emirates and how all I can think is how lonely it would be to be in those places. But how there is money, and status, and how to make your parents proud. But how you would be there in the Emirates and you would be so far from your family and I remember looking at his FB pictures one day when I was trying to remember, remember the girl you once were, the liberal girl who believed in peace and equality and freedom and all that fun stuff and it seemed so much the same. And that was fifteen years ago! Still smoking cigarettes with long hair standing in a sparse room modern art aloof in the corner morning light fading on cold coffee.

I don't care about the pursuit of ideas anymore, beyond the walls of my skull. The main thing, I have come to realize, for me, is my family. That it means something here, and that I am here. That I don't need something fancy and exotic for my parents to tell their friends I'm doing, or the money that goes along with it; just to allow my hands to be the machines they are, for my mind to switch over the way it does when the sirens come on. For me, there is nothing more noble. And the love of a good man. All of these innumberable little things. I am the luckiest. Titles are bandied about, Claudine with her effing articles that only serve to make you feel smaller, we watched the movie about Collinwood last night and the very last line he says, I think, is the reason the entire thing was filmed:

"Money, the job, it's nothing. Listen to me, I'm an old man, I know. Money comes, money goes. But to have someone to walk with... to have love.... that's everything."

And Tuna and Squinty Too

It's in the quiet and the dark and the semi-lucid twitching of almost sleep, our limbs still entwined and his lips a centimeter from mine, that I remember the things I used to hear in youth. And I feel your arms around me and your lips against mine and how you say my name first, how you say my name, and I know, I know. I tried two nights ago to tell him about it, the path I had to take to get here, and I remembered the phone call to Anne and Olympia that last time and how instead of hating you more I think it made me hate ME more, and how that realization now makes me want to destroy you, just so much anger, and I looked at him and could not believe that this is the same life and these emotions were possible back then, too. That it took so long to realize what was unhealthy. And that I consider myself an educated person! His breath on my neck and we fall asleep like that and I wake with those fingers combing through my hair and he calls me baby and before we get up he pulls me closer and in the silence so much is said. And it is more than I ever thought possible.