There is some part of you that will forever be hidden from me. I think it lies somewhere beyond the scent of your perfume (subtle cherry blossoms) and before the waves in your thick, black hair. It is something that I thought, as a child, I would grow to have. That it slept within me but the first time I fell in love or saw the face of God in the ocean’s tide, it would awaken and I would know it instantly as my inheritance from you.
It has been, as you say, “too many years to count” since you’ve stood in your native homeland, yet your accent is rich and smooth. Why didn’t I learn to speak as you do? I suppose my father’s great love of everything American insured that my annunciations would all be just so. Not the liquid warmth of your cadence or the rumbling laughter that will always say to me, “elegant woman.”
I was twenty-five before I woke and stepped to the mirror. I was living alone in Los Angeles. I stood, in my boy’s sleepware, my dark brown hair messed from sleep, my mouth full, my cheeks creased from the too-new pillow case. I looked into my eyes. They are brown, like yours, but nothing like yours. In that moment, for the first time in all my life, I realized that I would never grow up to me you. You had a secret ingredient that I lacked. A secret ingredient that my genes could not or would not replicate. You are the diamond blade and I am steel.
That realization was not a welcome one. Time passed. The feelings sank into me but the thread of sorrow running through my nervous system never entirely left.
Today I felt wild. I wanted something I could not have. I prayed. I broke a paint brush. A broke a coffee mug. I went riding even though you told me not to drive upset.
I wasn’t upset. I was on fire.
The speed swept the flames away but did not still my mind. I want to show you I am intelligent and mature. Instead I manage “witty” and “thoughtful.” I want to show you that I do not desire what I cannot have. That I know patience. I have mastered control. Instead, you look at me with still, deep, quiet eyes and whisper, “I love you.”
I want to accept you—the embodiment of the elegance and eloquence that a woman can have—into my heart but I feel unworthy. I have not made a place for you that is lined in silk and edged in gold. I am a small flame, quick to burn, and you are flint, able to create anything. Light a candle. Start an inferno.
In the shower, after five hours on the road, crisscrossing the State as well as my state of mind, I allowed the cold water to strip everything away. To leave me, bones alone, beneath the spray. “Remake me, Lord,” I whispered into the spray. “Remake me.”
But He does not remake. To remake would be to admit mistakes. He does not make mistakes. We are each beautifully, terribly made. Utterly alone. Forever with one another. All of us.
I accept you into my heart. But it may take some time for me to join you there.
E.J.
