Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I tell her...about the trivial things I took for proof of permanence--the coffee brought to bed in the mornings, the bicycle rides in the afternoons, the ritual games of backgammon after dinner. I tell her how we slept, his hand falling naturally on the back of my thigh, the gravity of that hand as I fell asleep, holding my body with a single touch.
-Brenda Miller, "Needlepoint," Season of the Body

There is a rotten kind of sickness in the center--deep and sunken behind the cleavage point of my ribcage. It is fear in a deadly form, untamed. These things packed tightly together into some semblance of weight have every possibility to be nothing more than "trivial things I took for proof of permanence."

I read this passage sitting in the sand when everything in the world should have felt right. It was like a punch to the gut. Somedays every minute feels that way.

I have no idea where this is going. I have no idea what the eleventh hour holds. And just six weeks ago I had never been more certain of anything...

in all my life.

I am frantic-groping for pieces that once held faith together.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reading this reminds me that while my guy is deployed I should remember that during a seperation love exsists in a pure and idealized form and that the reality is of love is complicated.

I guess my advice to you is to keep in mind that while talking about marriage may be the sweet release to all the stress you've felt during deployment, it may not be so for him. Being home after deployment is stressful in itself. You're a highly intelligent woman, I'm sure you realize all this but it doesn't help the ache you describe to recede.