Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
- Zelda Fitzgerald
Parked outside of her house, leaning back on the dull gray Plymouth Volare I had bought from my mom for $700, I was to the dusk what the dusk is to space. Miniscule. Unimportant. A pin dot of transient dust on his way to the impossible glory I have always been imagining. The story of me as a high school kid falling for the first girl (we’ll call her K) who I ever fell for is neither a story of lasting romance nor one of lost chances.
Underneath a barreling ocean that I’ve never come up from, my life has been a mess since then. In high school I was close to something extraordinary, I suspect, because I was uninterested in what the world at large expected or wanted or even needed from me. But back then: I would smoke Marloboros and there was no texting K; no cell phones to let her know I was out front. There was the edgy slapping of the bottom of the pack/ the sensation of the cellophane/ the crinkly flatness/ the cupping of trapped air against my clammy palm/ and the blurry understanding that something had indeed shifted- both out there in the universe and right here on this sleepy suburban road- as a cigarette slid up out of the pack, singled itself out to die.
The way I lit it then was the stuff of legend except that no one has ever heard the tale and that has proven to be a pain in the ass as far as getting this thing made in to a major motion picture and all. It was like: I would slyly eyeball her windows to see if he was maybe hiding behind one of the thick drapes. If I would see one move a bit, then I would know that she was there/ peering out at me/ watching only me in the world at that moment/ a feeling that I must admit, I still long for even now. My every cell of life was riveted by the notion, the lingering if remote possibility, that K was looking out at me before we actually laid eyes on each other simultaneously. To be spied upon, to be ingested prior to allowing me to ingest as well, was enough to fray my every nerve to the point of electricalia. I was supercharged from dark places deep inside. I was lit up on the outside by the volting currents of something more than I could understand back then.
Playing cool, arching my back awkwardly even so that my body shape-shifted to the curves of the side of my car, I rocked the balls of my sneakers on the well made curb, pivoting my husky frame to appear, I imagined, both aloof and available. Curious and uninterested. Present and gone. All at once/ the long haired smoker boy/ mutton chop sideburns/ sensitive/ damaged/ resilient/ sharp/ creative/ smart/ and also very, very dumb as fuck/ all at once/ please just come outside now/ please/ because I don’t know how to be here before you are real once more.
The door opening, K easing down her one step onto the porch at yard level. Her oversized late 80’s light denim jacket. Her mess of hair/ her spilling locks/ the way she moved/ the way someone walks when you really want them/ not just in the old ways/ but also want them in these new ways that bring no language to mind. No words, I guess, for the 4:40 afternoon sun, the October gauze pulled tight across the face of the land. Thinnest layer of ancient smoke to look through. Indescribable construct of ages like some kind of curtain made of thickish time dangling from the brisk tough sky.
The silent approach and the shyest sudden smile. The holding back look on her unmakeup’d face. The pale skin around her eyes as they move with the grin.
Underneath this development of homes, the gods go to war, slashing each other open with cleavers made of ice and bone. The war for my existence has begun. I am smitten. I am weak. Everywhere you’d look these days, I am exhaling smoke out through my eyeballs.
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