Who Won't Play Games Behind Me

The confidence giver and I are talking again.

It's wonderful and strange and I hate it and love it.

He watches me when my back is turned. I don't know whether I should be happy he looks at me, or sad that he can't do it when I'm facing him. He's apologized for everything that he did. And he gave me the reasons.

I can't quite fault him, either.

But anyway.

He says certain things just to piss me off. He pushes my buttons in ways that only he can. Should I be happy that he's interacting with me, doing things just to see me angry? Or should I hate that he's not coming up to kiss me on the cheek and ask me how my day is?

These are the questions that I can't ask him. That would be laying out my hand. That would be breaking the rules. I've always hated rules, but this is one of the most important games that I have ever played.

If I lose, I lose YOU. If you lose, you lose me. And even if we can't have each other in the capacity we're dying for right now, we can't stand to not have one another at all.

Oh darling, I just want to hear you love me again.

Rewind, I Wanna Go It Again

I bought a diamond.
It was what she wanted. She told me that much. I knew that to be true. This was probably the easiest birthday present I've ever bought for her. She was always so difficult to buy for, both because she was impatient and because she was just so—weird. There was no one hobby that I knew I could buy something to contribute to. No cake pans for a baker, no knitting needles for a crafty woman, no stamps for the collector. And even if she did see something she liked, she would go and buy it for herself. She liked a million things and liked nothing all at the same time.
It sometimes felt like she was depriving me of the privilege of seeing her face light up when I bought something PERFECT. Perhaps I felt that way because so often she handed me a small box wrapped messily in newspaper and electrical tape that took me hours to peel off. And it was always something perfect.
Perfection was something she didn't strive for, and yet so easily attained, it made me sick. Yet, nothing really ever seemed perfect to her.
I bought a diamond.
This wasn't one of the glassy ones that they keep at the Wal-Mart in gold bands that are liable to turn your finger green. And yet neither was it one of the huge rocks they sold in blue boxes that said everything by their size and garishness. (Why of course you're in a stable relationship! Why else would he spend thousands of dollars convincing you that marrying him will be worth your time?)
She hated those things. She thought they cheapened they sanctity of gift giving and love and the meaning of a ring.
“Don't you understand? It's a circle, and a circle is eternal in a way nothing else is. There's no beginning and no end. Well, I take it back. Only love has an eternity like that. You don't really start loving someone, you only come to realize that you loved them the whole time. And you never really stop, you only don't let yourself say it out loud anymore, because loving them hurts you so bad it will make you burst on the inside. You lie, because if you don't live in a lie, you'll have to lay down and die. I mean, you get over it, eventually. Well, you don't really get over it. It's like cancer, it goes into remission, but you live with the knowledge that it's always there, inside of you, and it will eventually eat you from the inside out.”
Love was dangerous. She alone made me understand that. When I told her one day that I didn't understand why we bothered to love, she just looked at me the way a mother looks at her child when he asks why flowers die.
“It's the same reason that people snort cocaine. They fall in love because they need to. They are at a place where if they don't fall in love, they are going to fall apart, and falling apart means you'll never be put back together the same way.”
“But doesn't the same thing happen to every addict?”
“I suppose. The writing is different, but the stories all end the same way. I think when you fall in love, the tragic ending is just a little bit sweeter.”
So I bought a diamond.
I bought this diamond at the antique mall that she had spent so many hours haunting, wandering about in. She would touch all the dusty bits of old finery, flip the molded pages of diaries that were long lingering after their authors.
I knew she'd like this one better. It had—character. History. All things that she had wanted so badly in her life.
I carried the ring, ever so slightly tarnished, back to my house, clutched in my palm with my fist in my pocket. I carried it past the threshold I still found myself waiting for her to cross. I sat on the couch that her smell lingered in, sat next to the afghan she had stayed up all night finishing.
I stared up at my mantlepiece that she had found so charming and romantic. She was there, of course, both frozen in the pictures of her youth and the urn I had so carefully picked out for her. Black and faintly Gothic looking, a choice she would have made for herself, I thought.
I hadn't been able to bury her in consecrated ground. They never let suicides do that.
I cross the room and set the ring carefully on the lid. For the first time in three days, I smiled.
I had, after all, found the perfect present.

Memento Mori

NOTICE: ALL ORIGINAL FICTION IS PROPERTY OF TAIMA! DO NOT STEAL!

Now that you are gone, there is music echoing in my ears, such that I had never heard before. It was so strange, because now that you are not here, I understand that you were music. There was music in your laughter, there was rhythm in your every move. The way you spoke was harmony, and even when your voice was rising in that frightening crescendo, you were a symphony. Did you always hear music? Was there always a song playing in your head? Or am I foolish for thinking such a thing could be true about you?

Now that you no longer walk with me, I have found how warm the things you made are. I have gone and wrapped myself in the cottons and wools that I had once sneered at. I lay on the bed where once you laid, and wrap myself in the covers that you found such comfort in. I am reliving the comfort, the warmth, the embrace that you must have felt in the things you made with your on fingers. The day you died I took down your favorite shawl and wrapped it over my own shoulders. How could I have been so blind to not see this before, how could I have been depriving myself of such a delight? How could I have deprived you of the sight of seeing me enjoying this?

Now that you no longer sit at my breakfast table, my taste buds have awoken. I have sat down and smelled the heat of tea with sugar, have tasted it flowing down my throat. I have to say that it tastes like you? For too long, I was searching for that. For too long, my teeth were aching for the familiar flavor of you. How is it that I never made this simple connection before? How is it that I never let myself drink this in before, never before tasted you all day like this?

Now that you don't sit up all night anymore, I have found the wonder of stars. I sit awake, again wrapped in your shawl, and I sit with the window open. I feel the cold air of the night, virgin and new, blowing over me. I number the stars, name them such as the Greeks never would have dared. Here is the Light of Your Eyes. Here is Your Smile. And here... Here is Your Face. I trace these shapes and never could I make anyone else believe they are there. Why did I never come and sit with you like this? Why did we never paint a masterpiece in the sky together?
Now that you are gone, I know what it is to be lonely. I took you for granted. I thought you'd always be waiting for me, curled up on the battered couch, with the moth eaten blanket draped over your body. I thought I'd always find the old tomes in your hands (I have discovered what it means to feel those pages beneath my fingers, to read the words that are so ancient and still so resonating with my soul! How could I never have noticed before?). I thought you'd always wake up next to me, your hair a mess around your face, your eyes blurry and never lighting until they landed on my face. I know now what it means to walk these streets, so full of people and still so empty. I know what it means to turn the key in the lock and smell nothing but my breakfast dishes, in this dark, dusty apartment.

Now that you are gone...

...I suddenly remember that I will die, too.