Liars of the first degree

So we sit back and watch it unravel… slowly letting go of all we held dear. You light the match, I put the fire to everything….just one more dirty battle in our dirty little war. We’ve done nothing but give each other the hard lessons but we aren’t learning… drawn lines in the sand, but the world keeps on turning. So as our dance winds down, and our music fades, we get few opportunities to say what we feel, even fewer to feel what we are saying. So as we take one step up, in slow time to the music, we must take two steps back and somehow get through it.
Last night I dreamt I was in your arms, the music played and we loved each other for just a minute…
just one little minute to represent all the millions of minutes we’ve loved and hated and wasted and thrown aside. But waking stole the moment away. Leaving me with yet another debt to pay the sandman.
And here I am, in my car, driving somewhere, anywhere, away from you, which painfully only circles back around to you. I fumble for a pen and any piece of paper, and as the gorge rises in my throat and my eyes mist over.. I lay it all down. I lay down the happiness and the outright joy, the passion spent, the labors, the feeling content. But no matter how I put it to paper, it still does a slow dance in my imagination. Painfully, one step up and then two steps back, lives in suspension.
I wonder, do you get quiet and think of me? Bury your face in your hands so you can’t see? Does the regret, and pride, and the bleeding ever set you free? Because pride will bring us both down a good measure, just wait and see. It will keep us from each other’s pleasures. Stop the sharing and stave off any caring. Leave our beds cold as we grow old. I see you look at me, and say I am still the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, but it does me little good, and you less… Because there is no room for you and me. The mistakes we have both made are unforgivable. And I beg you to stay your blade.
I was your something fragile, something to be handled with care. But if you care, then hopefully you will someday regret your rough handling, your pride outstanding. I am not sure when you stopped loving me, but I guess I needed to be free.
Now the music comes to a close, our movements nearly imperceptible. I see that muscle hammering in your jaw, and you must hear my heart beating. We stand there and let it all slip off track, the line has reached its inevitable end. And all that exists now is the space between, which might as well be an unnavigable fathomless place of darkness and little grace.
…and I say let it go, and you agree, but we are both liars of the first degree.
Charlotte Greer Slater 2.17.13