Kitchen Dances

I could tell she didn’t want to be seen. My therapist told me never to assume I know the full story. But I wonder if she’d ever studied a lover the way I have. Knees nestled on the couch, eyes that lift from the page to crinkle into a smile and exclaim “come here! How was your day?” Steps up a ladder to my loft, shifting her weight to place a bow-tied bouquet next to my barren desk. She drew the curtains every day and let the light in.

Somehow in learning love for her I learned it for myself. I’ve never seen myself in motion. I see myself to assess, to critique, to question. I see myself in the mirror with anxious hands on my chest.

She is in motion. I see her how the world might see me: listening in earnest, loving creatures with tiny kisses, presenting food delicately plated. She is the ephemeral thing that enters houses and leaves them home. 

Lately, ice had cut through the autumn air. I came and went unseen. Somehow when I passed by she was always deep in thought. My thoughts reciting reminders that everything was fine. Everything is fine.

“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about me. You’re safe.”

My therapist said other people’s stories are never mine to write. I doubt she had felt the way an embrace can shift from bodies merging to magnets resisting every urge to repel. 

These days the blinds stay tightly shut. The monotone grayscale only breaks when someone else is around. I settle in to feel her warmth from a distance. Listening from my loft as she laughs her way through a culinary exploit with another man that comes and goes. I stay. Always I stay long enough to see love out the door, picking up the cups and wiping the counters clean again.

There is no music in our kitchen dances. Glide down the stairs, eyes down, spin, face away from your partner, open the fridge, eyes intent on the fruit, spin, eyes down, reach for the plate, dodge left, “oops excuse me”, eyes down, hurry upstairs, shut the door, exhale.

I hate the kitchen dance.

I run and run and run. Seven miles of December pavement is not enough to shake it out. I keep thinking about the day she picked me a purple journal and placed her hands around my waist.

I wobble up the stairs, panting, reeling, ready to accept my fate. The door clicks open. One footfall and I know it’s her.

“Hey”, I say, mediocre at masking my discomfort “do you have a minute?”

“Um, ya, sure, what’s up.”

“I feel like we’ve been dancing around each other for a few months now. I don’t know how it started but I feel it every day and I’m wondering if you feel it too.”

“No, I’m fine I don’t know what you mean”, she says, with the tone I’d only heard reserved for her least favorite students and the guy from Best Buy.

“I guess I’ve been feeling sad, maybe even grief. Like my friend moved in and now there is a roommate in her place”.

There is no crinkle in her eyes.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I guess you just learn more about people from up close. Friendships are hard to maintain. I guess I just don’t think of you as an ex or a friend anymore and I’m okay with that”.

Her answer brings a wave of clarity with no relief.

“Ya, that makes sense. I’m okay with that too. Thanks for being honest.”

That night, when the pavement cannot help I turn to the pen. As I write in the little lavender notebook, my mind wanders back to a Bellingham bookstore. I flip to the start…

“I found this journal with an angel. One I hope will stay in my life for a long time. To the eye she looks like someone to be whisked away by the wind, but her strength is obvious. After only a few months I have love for her. I leave her home warm, full, smiling a secret smile. It picks me up and leaves me high, instead of pouring out my cup little by little. I want to know more about her culture, her family, her dreams, her heart. How long I’ll spend in her light I do not yet know.”

The moon is full. I return to the pavement. I leave her home. I leave my home.