running

Catharsis was the line & story I was going to sell to the pretty thing.

I met a stranger last night, from the northern country. The rain fell, and as her husband took a leak in the restroom, we talked marathons, which we agreed, takes a certain sort of soul to like, with all the dull discipline and rigid routine required to hone a body for brutal, boring, paced running.

"I love running, though," she said, "I love just opening my front door, and going, and I don't know where I'm going, but I just go."

"I love that." She meant the stuff of long drives, aimless evening wanders, & meaningless sex with strangers you briefly think you vaguely understand, but never will truly know.

Her husband returned.

"Do you love that, darling? Running takes me away from you, do you love that I run?"
"Of course I love that you run. Look at that body that comes back."

And they kiss.

I bid them goodnight, and close shop.


-- 


Wandering the streets, towards a way home, I think about Catherine who fell asleep waiting in bed, at home. 

I think about all the Catherines, and all the souls that didn't crave going home to them. Catherine with her pretty face and her slowly shaping body, which is lovely because she has been trying. She deprives herself of daily simple joys, and pushes her vessel, so that one day, a man will come, and sweep her up into his strong arms, and take care of this little grown princess, and she won't have to worry about a thing at all, and simply play, with the children, and make food, and wait all day.

I think about Catherine who wakes for a sliver of a moment from her sleep, warm in the security of bodied company, and her sleepy happiness which brings my mind no ease.

I think about crawling into bed and fucking Catherine, and donning the movements of this man that she craves, and truth be told, she doesn't care if you're pretending, as long as it looks just like the real thing in her dirty romance novels and she never has to catch on, like she thinks she is some trophy you'd go through the effort of courting and lying to, in order to fuck, as if pretty girls weren't everywhere, as if there weren't genuinely kind, pretty girls in the world, who were capable of real love, who you wanted to make love to.

Love, and I think of other souls as I am slipping in quietly through my door.

I drop the things. I unbutton my shirt, slip from my clothes, & I am naked in the dark hours of the morning. All the stars are out and stark-bright, post-rain. I think of wet pavement under streetlight.

I find an old t-shirt and pull it slow over my head, and close, onto my body, and it is cool and smooth, and soft as tenderness. I don't think of bitter things, but of the way the loveliest souls smile, as they give in to the happiness that sweeps them. I roll the legs of my sweats up, and finish dressing. The world is asleep, so I slip out again.

The silence of houses and the moon. 
Catharsis, and I am not chasing it.

I go, and the feeling overtakes me.

She fell into my life like a girl drenched in rain. I don't think it was autumn; likely, spring, some March or May day; I don't care for April, so I don't remember it as April.

It was raining, and in our spring coats, picturesque in the city with our umbrellas and our boots on the avenue and the rain and grey, I left. It was cold, but not so much. There was no misery. My socks were dry. Spring was near; the star magnolias were nearing bloom.

She was wearing red. We were all in taupe and greys, & blacks, shades of the New Yorker.
And there she was, soggy, & dripping like a tulip. And she was mine.

Maybe if someone else had spotted her first, someone with a nicer mug & an extroverted temperament, but it was raining & evening had just fallen. She was like a damsel. Distress. Something.

"Here." I offered her my umbrella.
"No, thank you, I'm alright,--" she went on.
I slipped the handle in her soft hand.

"It's alright."
And before she could return it, I nodded goodbye, and crossed the street.

---

I loved her like that. She was perfect.

And she held back a sob. She was wearing black today. Some black frumpy sweater and black jeans, & nondescript black pointed shoes. Her mouth was painted a dark burgundy.

I did not want to kiss it. I hated her mouth like that, all pretty but undesirable.
Who did she paint it for? ---Not for me. Maybe for herself.
We only have ourselves at the end of the day.  It was almost symbolic. She was funeral colors.
Who loved death? Death is not catharsis. It's just the end.

"Please take your umbrella." She took it from the stand. She was playing on symbolism.

"No. It's alright."

"I don't want it." She started sobbing through her words.

"It's just an umbrella." It was.
She threw it at me. It hit me. Caught me off-guard.
I was angry, for a moment, but it didn't hold.

And she held herself and began sobbing harder. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to kiss her, but it wouldn't be the same.

The feeling went out. It was like a bulb, and love was the filament that broke, because thin filaments break. The light goes out, and it is just a dead bulb. I wanted to hold her, but it wasn't my place. I did not love her.

Without another bullshit art moment in me, I grabbed the knob, twisted quick, & left. Locked & pulled shut.

The air was fresh & damp. It was raining. I'd catch a cab around the first corner.