Spanning Time Without Me

I’m going to call this a rough draft because it originally came to me as a song when I was in the shower. I’ve been fucking around with the tune, and the verse chorus verse, and I don’t have a guitar or a piano here, and I got frustrated, to say the least! Still angry, except now with more tears!!!

The book we wrote together was six years long. He wrote the ending without me, years in advance. So not fair. I wish he’d warned me before I got so deep. I’m alive. He fed me his words. I fed him mine. I was never full, always hungry for more, counting down the moments until the words started again. I was butterfly flutters and all aglow. He was all smiles with eyes that spoke a language I never interpreted.

I knew what I wanted, was longing to just settle down together in the comfort of cloud like pillows of trust. His mind was set to wandering and he was longing to head east, where he could get to feeling alive. I just fed him more, hoping he’d know that
everything he was itching for was right here in me. He grew thinner no matter what I did.

When he lifted up his little empty cup for me to fill; I held up my empty bucket. It must have been overwhelming. I wasn’t being greedy, just being the me I was then. I thought I was doing most of the giving, didn’t realize how much I asked of him until tonight. I didn’t think that I wanted more than I needed.

He told me to run along, go play now; he had other writing to work on. I went off and waited without him. I am not a patient woman. I grew restless trying to crack the code of his messages. He smiled, even chuckled a bit, at my frustration.

Spanning time together, we went from our nine hour phone calls to rides home from work, sitting in our seats, silent. Rage came along for the ride. I slammed his car door hard. He took off, no longer waiting, watching to make sure I made it into my house safely. I saw him throw the five dollars that I had left on the dash for gas out the window.

Once he was ‘round the corner I searched for it by streetlight, finally finding it amongst a pile of wet leaves. He asked me later if I’d gone after it and I lied. He was so far under my skin he could tell the truth. I tugged at my hair nervously and waited for him to turn everything back around.

I don’t know how we got going in that direction, but once we did there was no turning back. I trusted him; he was the one who knew how to drive.

I was wrong when I told him no one was keeping score, but I meant it when I said that I didn’t want to play his game, but that I wanted to win.

Six more years have passed since our book read THE END.
I looked him up online, thought I was ready to just check in, say hey.
I found someone who knows him now and she emailed me and said,
“Hi! He has mentioned your name before. He is doing great! He seems happy and healthy!
What message do you want me to give him?”

I realized that I’d made a big mistake.
I hoped he hadn’t let her read our book, wondered if they’d written one together.
Now I wanted to see him one last time, study his face, and ask him why he went away.
I wanted to know what I had meant to him, back then, and why he spent so much time on me.

I typed out message after message, contemplating and then deleting. I’d thought there were so many things I wanted to say.
All the words are used up now, we had spent them frivolously.
In the end I wrote, “If you see him, say hello”, the nod ‘n’ wink to Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks” was for me, not her.

I hope he got to the place he needed to get to; a place of health and happiness that I couldn’t give him. He is not lonesome without me.
Now I know that he is alive. I can find just about anyone on the internet, but I can’t find myself. I asked my doctor about ECT treatment for this depression, hoping to have the memory of him zapped out of my brain. He’s doing great; he is happy, and healthy, without me.