After the Break

Well, I’ve done it, haven’t I. Yes, I’ve done it.

I’ve done it but the difficulty is in the doing, in the present. I feel stripped, less realized and perhaps less real, as though I’m filled not with human innards but with sacs of air, bumping into each other slowly and dumbly like birthday balloons.

And how is he? How does he think of me, now? Alongside this: how do I want him to think of me?

If I presented myself to him, would he strain, limbs outstretched to the tips of fingers, pained, desperately overriding any bitterness in his mouth and weakness of knees to reach for me? Certainly I do not wish for this, when I would not reach for him in the same way, when I would receive him with the airs of a beneficiary, as one who was appealed to, and not appealing.

And-- if he was simply stewing, hating, stagnant, marring the conception of me in his mind and thus me-- if, upon appearing in front of him, he simply turned away, out of indelible spite, and wished me away, and his wish came true-- then?

I am fiddling with these possibilities in my mind, touching them and feeling them again and again and doing so makes me feel dulled, filled not with actualities and certainties but noting duly the absence of them.

How to disregard them?