21
It feels like we’re both running away from this, somehow.
22 0 missed calls.
Is that the nature of burdens like these? You gain, you tire, you pass on? To let go of this, do I have to hand it over to someone else? Do I even have a choice?
–
(Did Ba?)
6:34 PM I read a book. The words don’t stick on the page right. Every time I breathe they twist out of shape, turn into nothing more than a collection of squiggles, bent ink. I feel like I’m watching my body through a tunnel. My eyes peer out through my chest, layers unpeeling. Is it right to feel so detached from this?
Maybe I’ll have to. Tell someone, I mean. Maybe I will be too tired of carrying it. Or maybe I will lift it up, let it light itself in my hands, and say, Here, look at this. We can hold it together.
– 7:42 PM He calls. We talk about it. – When I hang up, it’s 8:08 PM. We talked for twenty minutes. Hours of waiting for a conversation that wouldn’t carry over dinner. My hands twist in the blanket, clam up in sickly heat. I’m coming down with something. It feels like it’s been days. I go to check the recording. Nothing. I never even clicked the button. I’ve been searching for the poem. Is this it? I wanted to confront this thing, omit this object from inside me and hold it up to the light. Look at It. Feel It pulse in my hand. Until It became a separate part of me, something I could step away from and come back to when I was alone and better prepared to face it. When Ba told me Gido’s story on the phone, I felt it leave me. And at the same moment it left me, I heard it weigh down on him. Ba. (In order to lose it, I had to listen to him give it to me all over again.)
The Lovers, the Poets and Me Cecilia Cuddy