Treely like this at lakeside elsewhere elsetime real remembered in orange sulfur brillo of spotted sidewalk lights and moonblue water shadows snaking she and I a bargirl lifted into more than maybe most by the chance conception of accident swung stuck too in still moment ballooning with unfamiliar with all unordinary awkward weight of realbeing in balance between us swingchains ratchety whine cipher as toed sand in the park sand divot worn by so many feet spins the two chains together raveling and unraveling clank scrape and spin rush silence wending back on itself and maybe arriving while she stares stung tearlessly and her voice which had finished speaking just before the silence sounds in two minds harsh too highly pitched from its normal tense troubled true.
Well, I say inadequately but gruff.
There is no accent to this no brogue humor no stirring just plain me like sandpaper.
It was a start, a well, dug.
Best I could do.
Well, trying again, well what not to sound too harsh or businesslike because I'm not sure as I'm sure you too feel about this because I'm not sure what this is business now or some strange karmic coming back and I did mean to call you but . . . you know.
It's real, she says, that's what it is no need to label that's just excuses delaying whatever I'll tell you what (she's on a roll now again like opening the plywood tent door here in my desert and the wind slaps it free and all the interior tentness chuffs and strains and shimmies and gathers useless momentum against its stakes) I'll tell you what just simple I think now it's the best thing and I've been thinking about it a lot and have talked to Nicky, just her no one else, and she's going to take me to the clinic tomorrow and it'll be done.
Oh, I say.
Somewhere there is like a parachute the hem-fluttering of a dress up down or just in the falling flicker of fitful what could this be if it were let? Courses untraveled from the nexus slipt if I were to say maybe no or maybe we should I don't know what, live together, raise it (him/her) together.
Just two-hundred bucks from you, two-hundred from me, it's both of us, on both of us, of course, two to tango you know, drylaughs she with that voice that isn't hers but tired, so you pay half, I pay half, that's it we don't need to worry about it anymore problem solved and then she yes I can feel verging toward stillness.
Oh, I say.
She sits rigor straight in her ratchet saddle chair unswung and hasn't looked at me the wholewhile but out across the night park nowhere.
I'll bring a check then.
My desk put it by my light tomorrow before noon I'll need to cash it you remember where my room is right?
I'm not sure.
I don't say so. I think I'll be able to find it or maybe ask someone.
I look away.
She stands and not trying to not look back not anything so theatrical but the real not caring lightness of decisionmade and movingon walks up greensward evening dark with the spit of lake foam flying from westwind worked up and her swing absence swings longer than it should pushed by the spray and the breath of breeze and by my unwillingness to think, my unthinking willing what.
She's gone.
After moments seconds hours but probably something close on ten minutes clocktime I too ratchet up and stride not looking until opposite direction until headed beach along back through foams spittling toward an apartment lit and Annie-inhabited I want her Annie nearness and to be done with my man-about-towning and what should I tell her? When earlier but by half an hour only this girlcall came after what three messages ignored daily each more urgent on answering machine and at last Annie her very self said shit go meet her if there is that much unfinished or unbegun business betwixt then I said yes now is fine in that lake park near my place at the swingset fifteen minutes and unprepared in khakis and half-decent shirt I should have worn black at least to nod at solemnity and mark it I went and met and hadn't the slightest idea of what was to hit me then before I had time to know myself or consider stunned a child within mine funmaking conceived and I who would dread in better mind can do nothing but tremble hoarse and Oh and Oh and have no words defending nor a speck of bravery to suggest I might think on it as if it is my decision it is her body and it is Annie later who says if you wanted that I would still love you and raise it/him/her like ours if that's what it would take I would do it because this even though so new is unconditional and so very stunningly different than anything else I've ever and I just want you to know that okay?
Oh.
Let us bemarried and one.
There in my stunning it was birthed by death unsuspectingly failing to act a love different from love or perhaps same as love for love might be immutable but misused in its wordness to say to a lover other things like it is fun to be with you or I could spend my life with you I think but for me before that Anniemoment never had it shone so in all aggregrates blindingly around. Never had it been so accepting love not like this in near an action opposite against that actionless deathcoward me unspeaking and scared and shocked open to receive like blown back in the battered air the constellation of a child.
I walked not walking.
Numb.
And someone had art on the midnight beachstrand like an upwashed calamari phosphorescent spread chained papier-mâché globes wombcolored orange and wick veiny papers handmade and sparkly lights within and lapping in the waves washing winking out one by one as the whole shorted slowly spatzing along that beach darkened except where foam caught flying beyond and up grating sulphur orange last few flicker zygote globes and except where distantly among the rowhouses I unmistakenly Annie in the window backlit waiting.
Deep peeling in me deep such a strung up string of womb squid lights deep that stringing up moment on swing chains singing oily remembrances in croak voice all wrung up like an Errant swilly in his neckerchief comeuppance all strung up in a fate Annie that in shocked guard-lowered bare me-ness such unconditional is proffered accepted shot deep into soul creases fate furrows so dashed together souls they are then but suddenly soul.