Wednesday 2 May 2007

Prince of tides.

    Good morning.
    Don't cop out.


This will be your last post until Tuesday.

I will miss you, more than you know. But right now I have to be home. Home on my turf, Bridget's territory, resplendent with histories and dead husbands buried in my ocean backyard and the sun glinting on the waves. While I have the strength to have a goddamned opinion. When I come back I might be less strung out. Hopefully not this angry. Buzzy-bumblebee angry.

Here's hoping.

My waves. My ocean. That one you all love but it belongs to the saltwater princess. Me. I've got your bitter right here.

After I wrote last night I went and pulled out that stupid sweater and I put it on and then I went to sleep. With the sweater. With Cole. And as fucked up as that might sound it's a pretty accurate picture of how unbelievably fucked up I feel.

    Are you crazy to want this
    Even for a while?
    We're making this shit up
    The reasons for being are easy to pay
    You can't remember the others
    They just kind of went away


And I didn't ask Jacob if we could go home for a break. I told him I was going and I told him I was taking the kids and that I didn't want to be here anymore and I asked him if he would come too, formally, as if I was looking for distance from us and I put us back into separate places in my head because otherwise I get swallowed alive.

He asked if I wanted him there. I do, and I told him we could go to the cottage he bought for me for Christmas and maybe it'll give us a chance to talk quietly while the kids look for shells in that bitch of a wind that never ceases but takes your pain with it and maybe we can come to some sort of a truce while we're there. Without counselors and without God looking over my goddamned shoulder and without Jacob being right all the time and friends with opinions and bills and phonecalls and laundry and all this goddamned nonsense. And I'm doing it on my terms, because the hearing aids aren't coming either.

I know, it's all going to be waiting when we come back.

Maybe I just won't come back.

    we're done lying for a living
    the strange days have come and you're gone
    either dead or dying
    either dead or trying to go

In my perfect world, I have a watch with no hands. Time doesn't move. The sun gives me no indications, the moon lights up on command and I have every precious moment that I might need or want. The seasons would be invited, daylight could be stored, and warmth could be conjured whilst cold is soundly rejected and Bridget could sit in her favorite spot at the edge of her world, and maybe, just maybe...

Not fall off.