written for FAIRYTALES ARE TRUE

last night i sat staring into my skim latte, my friend alex sitting across the long and narrow, wood-grained table.

what should i write about? i asked. (i do best when prompts are dangled before me like a bowl of pepperidge farm cheddar goldfish).

what's her blog about? alex asked me.

sarah's? i lit up. oh, well, it's called fairy tales are true, and alex, they just might be. because she's tall and gorgeous and blond and she's married to a baseball player and now they travel the world together from one exotic location to the next and she's going to end the obesity epidemic with her living kitchen and yes, yes i'm gushing (and speaking at an uncomfortably high volume), but i might just be a little bit in love with her (and maybe, just maybe my fairytale  {yet to come true} looks awfully similar to this).


alex responded, perhaps you could write about what the fairytale is like when you don't look quite so much like the fairy-princess. 


scoff. kerfuffel. plunk.

(eventual chuckle).

this was not a slight on my beauty but rather against my dark hair. my, yes, brunette hair. (and also a testament to how well and how long i described just how gorgeous sarah really is). alex quickly amended the statement when i pointed out disney princess after disney princess who was not blond: belle (literary goddess and my life's great role model), snow white, pocahantas, mulan (and of course, anastasia {thought technically she was dreamworks, i think}). alex then went on to point out that i look most like pocahantas (paler skin, of course) and maybe a little like mulan. keep in mind i'm a white, irish-catholic girl from texas. thing is, he's kinda right.

as for the fairytale portion, mine is yet unknown. well, that's not entirely true. for now the fairytale is one of me living by myself in new york city and taking the world by storm (and by storm, i mean figuring it out inch by pain-staking inch).

i love new york, i do (much of the time). but i can't stop dreaming of red vespas, breezy sundresses, and sandals against cobblestone. the careless curvature of intersecting piazza and street. small, sunlit kitchens with copper kettles and adjacent balconies. unprocessed foods and bright shutters against aging stone structures.

europe has my heart.

oh, to be european! to dress like one and eat like one and travel like one. to love like one! and just as soon as i figure out how i promise you this: i'll spend my days traversing italy and france, scotland and germany, austria and switzerland, with the man i've always dreamt of and nothing but a pen, a piece of paper, and the very best camera my grubby little fingers can get a hold of.

(of course if the end days happens before this--and in new york, it's set to happen this saturday--i might be in trouble).

for now i toil away here in the states, living a charmed but often lonesome, little life. you see, i'm still waiting for the prince to arrive on his impressive white horse and whisk me away.

waiting is not quite right though. i am a modern girl in a modern world braiding my rapunzel rope one goldspun (brunet) strand at a time.

(and this is where baseball comes in). lately it feels as though i'm on the brink of something. on the brink of a new life--man, pen, camera and all. this feeling is persistent and nagging and all-together wonderful. and so the thing i keep coming back to, my touchstone words are these: if you build it, they will come.

and so i'm building. and dreaming. and sending up prayer after prayer that my fairytale comes to fruition. and i have this sneaking, wonderful, little suspicion that it just might. despite, or maybe just because of, my long, dark locks.

okay, i'll go first.

i peeled off the tights in such a hurry. there were holes in the feet and my toes were poking through and i was embarrassed. so i got out of them, fast as could. no show of it, just off.

there was so much i didn't want you to see. because if you saw, well then you'd know everything. and i am nothing if not deeply prideful.

i dreamt a few nights back that i reached for you. we were sitting in a car. a car? headed somewhere. and i reached my arm out to cup the back of your neck--that sacred space between shoulders and tufts of hair. but i couldn't quite reach. you were just past arm's distance.

i did that. i get that. i kept you there. i reached but never let you get closer than the span of my wing. and i would turn over and roll away because i didn't want you to think i needed you. it was casual and i was cool and i was fine, so i responded to everything dismissively and carefully navigated your questions, revealing nothing, all the while keeping to my side of the bed.

because, well, to reveal reveal anything would be to reveal everything. and i was nothing if not afraid.

i know you saw how my cheeks flushed. and watched as i averted my eyes again and again--not wanting you to catch the half-glints of a secret shame. and there were all those terrible jokes i told just to keep the levity?

self-preservation.

to imagine a world in which you might care for me was impossible. it had been so impossible for so long that it was simply a luxury i couldn't afford. the cost would be too much.

so instead i'd keep myself awake at night just to study the outline of your face, the curve of your back, the color of your skin, how you shifted and moved as light angled its way into the room.

the thing is... no one tells you about that moment--that moment well into the night when you get up to use the bathroom and you spend a minute in there--breathing, water on the face, studying yourself in his oversized, knit shirt and then you open the door to return to bed, and yes, he's still there and he's still asleep but his arm is reached out to the empty space where you were just minutes before. and you climb in--and he pulls you in. into him. all without ever really waking.

his awareness of your absence. no one prepares you for that.

there have been others, of course. other stories. other half-loves. triumphs and tragedies of this fragile heart. and it was early on that i came to accept i'd never tell you--you, the first man i ever loved, those three words: i. and love. and you. my love for you would simply be. it would shift and change and recede. and it would fill me up. and i'd move on. to the next. we all cope. we all adapt and adjust and accept.

but there was this sense, this desperate, ne'r talked of hope that we might cycle back and, then what?

i. and love. and you.

i. and love. and you.

i love the way the avett brothers put it. everything aspires to music, doesn't it? the ands there giving the words room to breath. so very shakespearean.

words and time and...

it wasn't the symmetry of the number that appealed to her, or the aesthetics of the even.

six years.

that was the time she associated with being unwell. six years. a time when life was somehow not her own. when she was less than. six years. that was all. and yet it felt like it was all there ever was and all there had ever been and all there would ever be: a lifetime. the whole of her lifetime.


seven years.

the amount of time she had known him and... well...

he knows. he must know. surely, he must know.

she expected it to pass. the feeling. she expected it to pass. everyone told her it would. and she had been so young when they first met and there was so much life to unfold and so surely this, this...thing would pass.

but it lived there. in the deepest part, in the braided ligaments of her core, and so she came to accept that it might never. it would shift and change, but remain.


that moment moment there, on the couch, him commenting on the black tights, it was a marker of time, for her. that he didn't know. he couldn't possibly have known that that, more than the lines now ringing his eyes or the new gray hairs (both things she found endlessly appealing), more than her fuller hips and forehead creases, that comment, was a marker of time.

because he wasn't there for those six years. and thank god for that. she wasn't either.



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god, words fail. they just aren't enough.

if i could find them, if i could find the right ones, i'd ask you to place you hand there again, between curve of knee and hem and let it live there for as long as we both could bear. i'd tell you that of course i see you. and the image is so clear, despite present circumstances or recent history. i don't know the whole of the story but i see you and i...well, you must know, surely you must.


i'm a girl that's only ever seen the pieces. the bits and the pieces. but with you it came all at once in a startling clarity. and so i'm mostly unafraid. i, who fear all, is mostly unafraid where you are concerned. unafraid of all that's come before or of all the time and land and life yet to traverse.

and i don't know what's to come. or of how much we'll traverse alone. or if we'll take any of it together.

but perhaps it doesn't have to be so hard.

there are those words. and they are so comforting. so full of... but i don't know if they are yours. and the strange, strangling doubt takes hold.

because you know that these are mine. i give them freely. well, mostly. but, without a doubt, you know they are mine. the question must then be, are they for you?


yes, yes, of course, yes. you must know that.

and so i want nothing so much as to ask, who? who wrote them? because there is the suspicion and the hope and the endless, endless doubt.

but somehow that questions seems unfair. or too soon. or simply past the point.

and i am at a loss...

an older gentleman recently said to me,

you're too tall. but other than that you're delightful. 

well, sir, did you ever consider you're too short?

and yes, i am delightful, thank you.

words and time.

words were dangerous around him.
because they were so few and they meant so much.

he placed his open palm above my knee but below the hem of my dress, let it live there for a moment, feeling the shape of my thigh through my thick, black stockings.

i like you in tights, he said.

oh god. time. awareness. the awareness of time.
i took a quick, sharp inhale.

how is it possible he knew me before i wore little more than tights with skirts or dresses or ill-fitting sweaters--anything oversized to cover a ballooning body in the throws of a disease? how is it possible?

six years.

seven.
eight.
four.
years and years and years.
two months.

time. countless breaths marking time.

and he was there before. but not during. not really. and so much has changed and passed and morphed. and for each of the worlds i've traveled through, he's traversed his own.

and we know a little.
but not so much, not enough

and we don't use our words terribly well. we talk in the space of silence. willing nearly impossible interpretations.

and there's been so much time. but not enough, really. not enough.

but he knows me. words or not. six years or not. seven, eight, four, years and years and years, two months, or not. he knows me.

more time.