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Increasingly, there is poetry
Increasingly, there is poetry. From Andrea Gibson‘s every time i ever said i want to die, to Sherman Alexie‘s Black Box.
Yesterday I met with the man who chose a phone call while 4,000 miles distant as an apt way to end an eight year relationship. We hadn’t spoken since that moment. I needed time to calibrate. Our relationship had been so fuelled by rage and passion, such complicated and huge emotions, so much love, so I thought; I loved him. But I didn’t want the ending to be like that, my ending, he’d already had his and it had sent a howl reverberating from hotel bedroom to the streets of New York. (I’m returning in May and I wonder if I’ll still hear it.) I wanted mine to be quiet. Clean. A clean cut.
I was a mess the night before. I made myself watch videos of our past, zoomed in on snap shots of our summers together, his face; I had to rip the band aid off so that it wouldn’t be a shock. I had to ready myself. I knew full well how my body loved him, how my cells would jump at his arrival, how my chest would lean. I couldn’t risk a moment of forgetting. I’d forgotten too many times before.
My head said to my heart, Now, look, I know you loved him but you can’t have him anymore. It’s over. He’s no good for us. And my head took my heart’s hand and said, It’s going to be okay. There was so much hurt I wanted to shout about; the temptation to make a scene, try and get the thing I’d been longing for, his understanding, compassion, pain, love, his real self to meet me; the self I’d imagined he was or could be. But this was the real him, he who chose a phone call to end it. That was the real him.
There is something calming about reality. Something non-judgmental. Reality is allowed. And when we met in chairs too soft and too close together that I had to move and adjust before I could sit down, it was quick, and to the point. It was goodbye face to face, because eight years deserved that. And then it was over.
Black Box by Sherman Alexie :
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe
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By The diary of a literary obsessiveIncreasingly, there is poetry. From Andrea Gibson‘s every time i ever said i want to die, to Sherman Alexie‘s Black Box.
Yesterday I met with the man who chose a phone call while 4,000 miles distant as an apt way to end an eight year relationship. We hadn’t spoken since that moment. I needed time to calibrate. Our relationship had been so fuelled by rage and passion, such complicated and huge emotions, so much love, so I thought; I loved him. But I didn’t want the ending to be like that, my ending, he’d already had his and it had sent a howl reverberating from hotel bedroom to the streets of New York. (I’m returning in May and I wonder if I’ll still hear it.) I wanted mine to be quiet. Clean. A clean cut.
I was a mess the night before. I made myself watch videos of our past, zoomed in on snap shots of our summers together, his face; I had to rip the band aid off so that it wouldn’t be a shock. I had to ready myself. I knew full well how my body loved him, how my cells would jump at his arrival, how my chest would lean. I couldn’t risk a moment of forgetting. I’d forgotten too many times before.
My head said to my heart, Now, look, I know you loved him but you can’t have him anymore. It’s over. He’s no good for us. And my head took my heart’s hand and said, It’s going to be okay. There was so much hurt I wanted to shout about; the temptation to make a scene, try and get the thing I’d been longing for, his understanding, compassion, pain, love, his real self to meet me; the self I’d imagined he was or could be. But this was the real him, he who chose a phone call to end it. That was the real him.
There is something calming about reality. Something non-judgmental. Reality is allowed. And when we met in chairs too soft and too close together that I had to move and adjust before I could sit down, it was quick, and to the point. It was goodbye face to face, because eight years deserved that. And then it was over.
Black Box by Sherman Alexie :
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe