Bride To Be - JLG Clift

I’d say it left, but it never came to leave, it never heaved itself to the rent by the hour hollow of a would be rendezvous gone awry with a series of increasingly intentionally missed connections and a succession of sighs shifting through the seasons from ones of genuine grief to absolute relief. It staggers belief if you’re asking, which you wouldn’t, because you didn’t, because you never will now and though I try to keep my internal voice still, stern, I can’t help but to yearn, not for what was there, because that’s been laid far too bare today, but for I thought was there, someone to care for and someone who cared, something soft on the rim of romance, something rare and seemingly reachable, instead of this ravaging rawness that caresses me claws to flesh tip to nail bed stained red, red as the cherry in this flat highball waiting to be pissed up the wall, my drunken aim angled for what I thought was the back of the bowl, but was the face of the stall.

It should’ve been you, it could’ve been you, I knew things got in the way, but to realise there was nothing to get in the way of, why keep the façade? Was it so hard to be honest? Was it so hard to face me, instead of leaving me to stare into the the ticking of a clock through the bottom of a drained double, a simple clock with a dirty face and three slow hands that triple despite the doubles downgrading to singles as the tab towers around me, standing, stood up, being picked up by a bouncer who could trounce me but doesn’t out of pity.

I was never pitiful, so I thought, though I guess the look courts me tonight in your place, because it was your place, regardless of what you say. Good or bad. It was supposed to be your place today.

But enough of that. I’m a bride to be, and I’ve got a priest to see, and a mother to make happy, so I’ll free myself of this note, never to be quoted, only to be floated through the federal system, stamp-less, classless, limp with liquor drying crusted in circular formations never to leave the county let alone the nation. I’m drunk, and it is dreary, and the year is nearly over.

We shared our times, toeing our wavering way down a neon Skid Row that was worlds away from Seattle, seeing due to doubles the street in doubles as a stage, and making a show of it all for no one to know about. Bodies in alleys, fingers taking turns, my prints upon you, and yours inside mine, the first to ever mine me there, that way, of your gender, of our species, to make me ever want to say the words I never knew when to say. You showed me something I never knew I could feel, and gradually you left it, not over night, but over drifting decades, an open heart hardening into a haggard hole, open arms never closing around you, but staying open, degrading into a widening wound that this letter has bloomed from. This letter to you, this letter to no one, this letter to the lover long gone. It was a phase for you, that’s all you ever had to say, it was your phase, so why phase me with it? Why appraise me the way you did, your warm fingers in every pleasurable place, bringing a wet refuge from the drought I never knew needed addressing before you started undressing me?

I’m a bride to be, and though I will soon be free of this note, you won’t free me. It doesn’t matter how many maxi pads pass without event, because your fingerprints are still in there, and this love which I wish were hate, feels like a cervix tear. You were in lust, so why’d you suggest love? Why’d you stay, why’d you call? Why did you let me sit down for the one night stand, and let me take your hand, and smile when I said join me? Why’d you join me all those years, over all those beers, in all those queer clubs, those clam baked bars, those dyke dives, and act like I brought you there. Like you never tasted me, like I never did the same, over the years your perceived tolerance building to a tight lipped shame.  And then you stopped meeting, and left me standing in a frame too big for just me, and you left it all to be, burying me behind a bevy of rain checks and a broken levee of pleasantries.

You know I called you today, to see if you’d really settle for seeing me settle, not with a man, because it wasn’t a gender dilemma. It was you: an abstract alley rut that repeated herself throughout the wealth of our dorms amid the norms of our set. I can’t lay a hand on stocking tops today, because of what I wore when we used to play.  It’s hurts too much, just the touch.

I’m a bride to be, and the only place I have left to hide now is behind my veil, soon to be unwrapped, found and revealed in front of a man who fell in love with what something is, and not a someone who made them feel. Real seems so relative, so repugnant, not meant for my today. I would give it all away just to feel your contemptible concept of a harmless phase haze me again. I would give it all, but what is there to give, and who is there to give it to, if not you?

I’m a bride to be, and even after today I’ll be there waiting for you to set me free, not from a place of weakness, but from a place of will, because only a profound strength could instil me with the ability to call you again, and set a date in the calendar for you to cancel on, only to set another, and pretend I’m not pretending that you’re not already gone.