Be My Valentine

When I was pretending to be asleep this morning, I was pretending because I like to feel how you look at me while you are looking for your glasses. You always look for them first in the bedroom, and every time they are to be found on top of the dresser, in the hall.

I washed my new tee-shirts from the thrift shop we went to while we were arguing, and found one of your black socks among the all-white batch when it was done. I should, by now, be wiser about the washing machine, and check it every time after I know you have used it, but I am not. The shirts look wonderful. No accidental dyeing. So I forgive you.

You are home now, taking a shower after work, and I tell you my head hurts from staring at the computer screen all day. What I want to tell you is that I am sorry, and that I know it was my fault, many times it is my fault. What I do tell you when you hold me, is that I had a dream where I lost you, but I do not tell you I woke up crying.

When you are making your breakfast in the morning, and I am still sleeping, I sometimes can hear your every move in the kitchen, every time you turn the page of the paper, when you clean the coffee pot, when you silently check your mail and read the online news. Sometimes I can hear nothing, and I only know you were still home by the sound of the door opening and closing when you leave. It is like I possess extra receptive hearing ability, but only every other day.

I tell you I want to be left alone, and you leave me alone.

It is very cold outside, and I take some of my clothes out to the balcony to air them out. My breath and body warmth and warmth from inside the house cause the balcony windows quickly to cloud, with vapor turning into mist turning into ice, and I am watching the crystal patterns of the ice when back inside. I suddenly miss grandfather, because the gray sweater airing looks almost exactly like what he wore around the house when he was still healthy. It was medium gray with large gray buttons, and the knitting had patterns on it. When he died I took the sweater to use, and I used it all the time until it was in shreds, and still I wouldn’t throw it out. I still have it, on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, behind stacks of old letters from Vanessa and Christmas ornaments. Ever since grandfather’s sweater became so torn I no longer could wear it I have had a gray sweater more or less like it in use, but I have never found one that I loved the way I loved grandfather’s smoking jersey. I think about how I don’t think I have told you any of this, and make a mental note to tell you later. But when you come home, I have forgotten and never tell you.

The pine tree is my favorite tree. Your favorite tree is the birch.

It is snowing a little, snow from the tall trees all over the big yard, and the sun, a stranger for many months now, appears from behind the trees and makes the snowflakes golden and sparkly, and it looks like it is raining bright crystals. It is so beautiful I want to call you on the phone immediately, but it is already half past and you will be at a meeting. I think about how your day is unraveling, if you are having a good day, and if you are seeing the sun.

In my dream I am following you through the city, needing to talk to you but you refuse to turn around. We cross the streets and walk by stores and offices as if on a fast hover board, with no feel whatsoever of walking, but more like I am standing behind you and the both of us just stand there, suspended on a craft, gliding, letting the scenery fly by. I call your name, but you do not turn around. When you do turn, you look at me the way one looks at a stranger.

I think about you when you are not with me.

When you leave me alone long enough, I feel elongated and drained, and not complete anymore. It is frightening for me, because I used to not feel incomplete. But I am aware that there would be no songs at all, if I didn’t have this space for myself.

Most of the time it is a space the size of a paper. It is like you are the seams that hold me together, and the paper is my wilderness.

I am listening to you making breakfast. It is your day off, and you are making bacon and eggs. I have to leave soon, and I hate leaving you alone. It is the reversal of our accustomed roles that makes me uneasy, and I feel lonely going out to the world and leaving you behind. When I get off work it will be dark, and then we go to bed, and our lives are not very much intermingled, but for the sharing of the intimacies of morning and evening routines.

Sometimes I feel guilty leading a life that is so different from other people’s lives. I know it would be easier for you if I was just another girl. But I am not. And that is why, I think, you are still here.

Why I am your girl.