-something I wrote one day-

How do you know when it starts to fall apart? It never starts with something big, but like an avalanche a small pebble can become something giant that crushes everything in its path. And somehow it can go without notice for so long. One minute – pebble, and then all of a sudden, you turn around and it’s a boulder coming at you full force and there’s not even time to get out of it’s way. Constant vigilance doesn’t help. A watched pot doesn’t boil. It’s only in that instant that you turn away, when things begin to spiral out of control.

So he looks at me, and after three months I still have no idea how to read his eyes. Much of the time they are half closed, like the weight of opening them up all the way would tip the scale of his endurance. Through heavy lids his blank eyes consider me and the sound waves emitted by the vibration of his vocal chords cause my ear drum to vibrate. “Do you know how much you mean to me?”. No, I think, synapses firing. I study his eyes, his face, trying to catch some glimpse of a reflection of his heart. Trying, vainly, to gain some evidence of this emotion he would have me believe I inspire in him. “I’ve never been this happy before. I love you so much and I’ve never felt like this before,” chords and drums synchronize. The air between us is cold, my neck grows stiff from turning to face him. His hand engulfs mine, absently caressing it as the words stream out. I consider his moustache, slightly too thin and ending on each side before the corners of his mouth. His hair, slightly unruly, refusing conform to any discernable style. I consider him, weighing, always weighing every word, look and gesture. Cataloging and filing in my mind for cross-referencing at some future point to ensure that I’m not missing some warning sign that friends and television commentators will one day say I should have seen. I consider him and his bold professions of love and committment and compare them to mine.

I waited long after he did to say the three little words. There were moments when I felt completely submerged in it, and there were moments when I was hard pressed to find more than a few drops. Love. And when it’s good, the world is turned on it’s side. When I feel it, it’s all I need to get by – like the song says. And whether these times are a result of his effort or my attitude I’m not sure. Well I have a gut feeling that his effort was not involved very much, and if it was my attitude I wish I could bottle it and carry it around to inhale at times like these, when I’m feeling skeptical and doubtful that this thing is something I can really touch.

The chords and the drum form a melody that I’ve heard many times before, from many different men, who each loved me in their own way. All of them selfishly, all of them arrogantly, except one. The one before. He held not one whit of arrogance, or ego or self esteem for that matter. And that turned out to be the shadowy deathblow – but the love, the love was perfect. It formed a perfect circle around my heart that kept all insecurities and doubts away. There was no fear in that love. But, unfortunatley, there was no future in it. He was damaged and I couldn’t keep him the way he was, and he couldn’t change. So in my one perfect circle of love, I was the selfish one, the arrogant one and him the one left broken, still mending. So it wasn’t perfect after all but it made me feel complete. I heard more than words coming out of his mouth I felt the melody of love in more than just my ear drums. It was tapped out in the tips of my fingers and danced to by the pads of my feet. That was a melody that my heart beat in time with, I can still feel the tune now, echoing through me.

He is silent now, awaiting my response. I am silent too, not knowing what to give him. His eyes have not changed, his face has not changed. I know if I smile with extra conviction, the corners of his mouth will upturn, slowly and he will squeeze my hand. If I tell him I love him, I may get a show of teeth. If I say I will miss him tonight when we part, his gaze will fall as he no doubt considers the silliness of women. And if I were to insult him… to lash out and tell him that I don’t love him and never want to see him again, his eyes would still not change. Sometimes I want to see if I can hurt him, see if I can affect him at all. I don’t believe I could. I don’t think I will ever see him cry for me. I want to hurt him because I am jealous. This is not the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. How dare I make him happier than he has bothered to make me? If I could see him cry, if I could just, just figure out the meaning of his eyes. But that takes time. Time and more nights like this where I consider and weigh and wait. A watched pot never boils. I don’t know when the avalanche will come and if it will bury me or shake me free, but I know that I must wait for it. So I return to his eyes, and choose to believe that they are filled with love for me. I choose to regard the weight of his lids as the gate that keeps the passion back a safe distance. I will believe that he is afraid of losing me, and that it would hurt him if he did. And I smile, and say ‘I love you’, because I choose to.