I'm working on some things, piecing bits of journal entries, napkin notes and random memoiral thoughts together.
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In the Beginning
Ben, Ben.
B-E-N
Ben wouldn't ever be my boyfriend.
Only Janis Joplin had more pieces taken from her heart than my 1st–3rd-grade one suffered because of that boy. From the moment his substantially Bubbalicious lips corrected my z-laden pronunciation of "island," I made a vow—not nearly as silent as that "s"—to chase him at every recess until I could get close enough to his face to determine whether his lips were bigger than mine.
You'd have been hard-pressed to find one Kenyan who ran as much as I did those three years. I chased him through tunnels, tagged him "it," monkeyed bars and jumped from the highest swing. (We won't count the Valentines or the check yes, no or maybe boxes that were drawn.) But even after winning 1st place in the 100-yard-dash three Field Days in a row, I finally had to let Ben's affections lap me for the last time in the year of Mrs. Hunnicutt.
You see, even though my name wasn't Lacey or Emilie or Leilani, I'd foolishly thought that I could at least have received a non-Red-Rover-hand-hold based on the long-e sound in my own name, but I was kidding my kid-self. Despite the magic of our first encounter at the map of the world, phonetic particulars did not a love connection make. Instead, elementary love was built on stronger, more concrete things like, seating charts, a never-ending supply of ice cream money on Fridays and whiteness.
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Somewhere in the Middle
Forget about lately. Have I told you, ever, that I love you?
I've been carrying around, in my mind, these pictures of you, searching to find some cure for my unwieldy fear. I can still see and feel the ease in the way I leaned toward you, our exchanged glances--the OMG eyes and sly smiles. I see where we've been, and I wonder where we could go.
Whoever thought tearing down walls was easier than building them obviously never witnessed the fortress around my heart.
I love you.
The feeling flung hold to my heart, surprising me the same way a bitch-slap stuns a Stooge.
I feel silly.
How am I supposed to tell you when the word--even the feeling of--vulnerable quivers in my throat like vomit; when butterflies fail to personify the fluttering lies I'm probably telling myself about you to keep me from you.
Do you love me?
The merest exchange sends endless clues funneling through my brain. Your affectations are at once identifiable and subliminal. I swear you love me via e-mail or in the lyric of a song we both adore but dare not sing.
Do you know? Haven't you always known? I sense my awkwardness is most suspicious:
Averted eyes, halted speech patterns, careless shrugs ... that nervous giggle of mine, the sigh followed by the forced but somehow flowing humor.
You're more than a ripple in my stream of consciousness. One hello somehow happens to be just enough.
More than enough, really.
I dream you. I ponder you. I wish for a way to claw out from my own heart and punch my overly-calculating mind into belief, into this reality--this someplace only we know where I know you're waiting for me.
I'm coming.