Pendulums

"We're gonna be alright."

He could have been saying it to himself for assurance as much as he said it to me. Only he knows for sure if he ever meant it or if it was something he made up to fill the empty air as we stared at a freshly painted ceiling.

Sex wasn't as it used to be, carefree and lingering with conversations that would roll well into morning. Everything was rushed these days, no time was ever going to be enough and there were all these bothersome questions and god-damned ramifications to ponder. Even if I didn't speak them out loud, his random blurted assurances into evening air made it clear just how uncertain the ground in which we lay on truly became.

I could feel conflict in his embrace. Pull me tighter, become aware of clinging, release. Repeat. Quick, eye avoidant kisses and squeezes before departure had now turned into awkward pendulums where he would try to reconcile his coming and going in a matter of seconds. Four, five, six hugs before he could make it out the door, each one longer than the one before it. As if he thought he might never return. Kisses on my forehead, heavy sighs in my ear pungent with the odor of despair. Careful, screened gazes with cautious, slitted eyes trying to study me without being seen. I have to leave, he'd say.  How he could be so absurdly tender and so intimately challenged still boggles my mind.

He would think up additional things to say as he made it to the door, additional justifications to stay; I never bothered to argue. I grew silent once I realized his tug of war was not with me. It was with himself. The part that wanted to stay with me for always, and the other part that thought he didn't belong in that space. Three steps forward, two steps back. I learned to dance following him, never bothering to collect him in the way I intuitively knew I could have - had I been more polished.

I never wanted to force him. I wanted him to be in this space because he wanted it. He wanted me. All he had to do was search my eyes for words I would not say. He might be sitting somewhere, saying the very same thing. I never liked the sensation of being forced, neither did he. We both reacted aggressively to being told what to do, ironically I was the only one who could instruct him...and he, the only one to this day, that's ever been able to instruct me.

I would remain silent during his cha-cha'd exit. I would close the door after his departure. I would put my forehead against the foyer wall and feel the last strains of his imprint on my skin dissolve into thin air. On both sides of our universe, we'd both sigh under the weight of insurmountable fears. We are in many ways a carbon imprint of each other. His challenges, my own.  Indecisiveness. Suppressed worry. An overactive sense of responsibility. Self-righteous arrogance that prohibits us both from ever receiving well-intended advice the appropriate way. Fear of being left behind. Wells of untapped anger. A purposeful detachment from the world with the belief that we must never, never, never allow anyone completely inside of us. The ability to lie with the most well meaning intentions. The sensation of never truly being seen, until we saw each other. Perhaps these are the reasons I still react so fiercely to anyone who utters a negative word about him. It feels like they are speaking disparagingly of me.

He would go away that night, ensnared in the prison of his own fears and history. But he would return. It's been our secret, silent understanding that he will always return. And so has been the cycle of our education in love.

"We're gonna be alright."

A woman's heart is a vessel of secrets, my grandmother once said. I can see now exactly what she meant.