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raisins
| Dark Poetry #3 |
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raisins |
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svandersaar Junior Member
since 2001-01-15
Posts 40 |
The room full of its space instead of our chatter, I am eating raisins, dropping one in ten on the floor. He’d laugh and kiss my brow -- shake his head -- if he were here and I would begin to think of my clumsiness as some disease that keeps me from money, satisfaction, self-worth, love. L o v e he is shaping out of his mouth, eyes tilted over his glasses and soft one palm sliding down to my chin and blessing me with a smile (if he were here). Sometimes ghosts of our conversations: ex-girlfriends, a wife, some half-crush that was crazy about him and sent gifts -- one object or another bought in vain affection -- balls in my stomach and keeps turning. He repeats past relationships like counting over change; telling me of all the love he never returned, as though it’s casual banter and I wont feel it rumble in my mind half the night making my self second guess and speculate too far as though I am to blame for all those broken hearts and wasted bodies. Walking through the grocery store parking lot he tells me How easy it is to break a woman: Hit her self-esteem first, Tell her she’s beautiful in the beginning, every day But mark the next week with less, using lack as a weapon Then: “Gosh, you look like you’ve gained a little… but I still love you, I still love your body.” and so on and so on. Women are easy, he says. His eyes: like a warning, like a punch line. And I don’t know whether to feign acceptance or show my disgust. I am trembling, wondering if I am next not sure why I get these tales of manipulation and rejection tucked in between amorous sighs and quiet suppositions: What will our children look like? Where will our house be? Promises that I am what he wants his life composed of and the funny thing is, I know he wants that. After the first night at his mother’s apartment she told her friends the next day, “I just met the girl that my son is going to spend the rest of his life with.” Today we made copies of her keys: one for him, one for me. I was thrilled and so content… we drove home in the sunshine, my hair in my eyes and my feet on the dashboard. How do I explain that he is more than I ever expected out of human nature but seems to be a glimpse of a monster sometimes? As with his stories of sleeping around, using, leaving… telling me he’s not proud of what he was… but seems to revel in explaining the details to me. Is it because I am the only one who will listen? Or just the shock of having someone who will recognize all his faults and love him, still, for what he is? I am more afraid that it is my own lack, than any callous thing he could become: I wonder a little if I am here because I would (out of want, out of the need of pleasing) Take a female hip and round my tongue to its curve. If my legs are a large quotient of my worth. If he cares when I speak or sigh. And any reprimand, any assurance that it is the whole of me that takes him in seems some self-denial on his behalf, or delusion on mine. He walks back into the room and I grin and finger one of the dark, shriveled fruits into his mouth. He winks with his wink, the one that creeps up from between my thighs and tingles me sharp the whole length of my spine, and sits down at the desk. I review my questions. Will I force myself out someday, saying I cannot trust someone who confesses his life in lies to me or finally learn to believe his honesty, to feel the truth of his language with the center of my soul? My full departure or unconditional trust: I know he won't settled for anything less. [This message has been edited by svandersaar (edited 04-02-2001).] |
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| © Copyright 2001 Stacey Vandersaar - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Krawdad Member Elite
since 2001-01-03
Posts 2597 |
WOW! I couldn't stop reading this! If it were a novel, I'd get no sleep tonight, I'd be reading instead! You tell quite a chilling tale here, a touch of evil. Krawdad /:-}== |
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svandersaar Junior Member
since 2001-01-15
Posts 40 |
Ironic, that happened to me last night  . Krawdad, Tanks!Stacey [This message has been edited by svandersaar (edited 04-03-2001).] |
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dragonpoe Senior Member
since 2000-11-12
Posts 608Palm Bay, Florida |
You had me hooked, for sure. This reads as a great story or even an entry in a journal. But I have to ask about the significance in the beginning to "if he were here" and everything in past tense, then switching throughout the story and leaving off with the present. Just curious, though it did not slow the reading at all. With the word, I am mighty, with the pen I am free.. |
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svandersaar Junior Member
since 2001-01-15
Posts 40 |
see, the poem is the girls' review of the relationship while sitting in thier bedroom. 'He' is gone as she begins thinking, eating raisins, then the tense shifts as she thinks back, and resumes to the present when, at the end, he returns... cool? Stacey |
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