There was the steel sunrise, jagged Oakland neighborhood of barbed wire fences on the way from Bart stop in winter chill. I looked pretty in vintage furry coat dubbed princess, but my feet bruised and high heeled told a different story. I was uncomfortable and scared of the dilapidated houses and the stories they held. Finally we arrived at the gated urban compound and your little house and there were two toothbrushes in the POM cup. I knew who she was but I stayed anyway and those three days of beauty will remain in the story. La Casita of raw eggs exchanging hands in promises, of black coral necklace and heels only, of feet washing and endless conversations is gone in memory, only its sculptures of feeling remain.
Twilight was coming to us, mirrored by the haze on the Hawaiian lanai. Palms were withdrawing into themselves, like we were after the opening. Icy condo lamps contrasted with palms unafraid to bend, sometimes like us. But we were already apart, stiffening on the way to the exit in our human nature of goodbyes. One day on the way from Lanikai beach I saw people on the ridge and a most beautiful boy on a bike. My feet were sticky, the air sandy, the heart light but on the verge of weight. I was trying to forget you, as I sought shelter from the rain under a canopy of leaves.
The journey continues without artifacts of pain and beauty, remnants of some other time. Love imaginings, early designs started at the sandbox in warm and tender darkness of a Berkeley park under the stars, are gone. The desire grew, only to rot, a cavernous hole in my chest. Exit plans of disbelief, hatched before the movement. The dream became a nightmare from which there was no return, only a return from anger and resentment to post-wedding friendship.
I, half-blinded fool, had to float back to myself, releasing the ghosts of yesteryear. Opening the heart, sculpture of a warm Hawaiian salt water healing. Dread washed up, at forged and broken connection, the web of entanglement due to unwarranted gift of self. Memory, in unkind gaze of past’s mirrors, was lifting me up without a key.
Then I remembered Kierkegaard, “What is Truth but to love for an idea?...It is a question of discovering a truth which is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die”. I had to remember to live for my idea, once again and forever this time. The one who joins me on my journey now, will not be taking my truth away, only adding to it with his.