My girl messaged me last night.
“So your wolf is at the door” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Let him in” I replied.
I am a walking contradiction. Makes me look flakey sometimes, or like an ice queen. What is good for this goose depends on the gander. So be it.
Sitting in the tattoo chair yesterday. Speaking on my latest ‘relationship’ debacle.
“He left me and I am just holding him to his decision.” I said, my tone matter-of-fact. “Nothing worth fighting over or for in my opinion. They leave and I let them. I have been through this enough times, I know how it ends.”
Just as those words slipped past my lips, my phone vibrated a notification. I rolled my eyes and channelled Dorothy Parker “What fresh hell is this?”
Pushed the button and saw the tiny thumbnail. Heart leapt.
It can’t be.
It was.
OXOXOXO from one long gone. Not just ‘one’, my one. My Big Bad (wolf).
Took me an hour to calm down enough to reply.
Universe heard me speak of endings (like I know what that word means).
Funny.
How this ends? It doesn’t.
I hold my tongue and bide my time.
I get angry, I forgive, I maintain grace and adjust my armour.
I let myself hope against hope even when it hurts me.
And it hurt. I told you, he cracked open my bones and fed on my marrow, invited me to open him up and play inside him. Then he was gone. No word. His absence was all consuming.
I had to keep living, it’s what I do. Kept hunting and feeding on my own. Missing him and loving him in absentia.
There is no point in trying to figure out why people do what they do. They have their own reality, their own perceptions. I know him. I could have gleaned this, but hearing him say it was so much more satisfying. His choice. His words.
I could have spent months racking my brain solving for Y. Torturing myself. I am terrible at math, he had to convert my cold into Fahrenheit for me, sounded warmer when he said it. Everything does.
I had to tend to my own wounds. Instead of mourning his absence I cherished and guarded the memories of the time I had.
My precious.
Last night, out of nowhere, the truth arrived on honey coated lips and velvet tongue. I listened, and I understood.
A far better reason than anything I could have come up with on my own.
I love to say “there is no wrong answer” it’s my truth. But sometimes there is that one thing said that is just so full of right you end up smiling so much it hurts. He said that thing.
“If I let myself love you, I cannot share you that way. Greedy hands and eyes all over you, I just can’t.”
“Well what if I quit?”
“Depends on the why.” He replied.
It always comes down to M+X=Y.
“Because it’s time. Because I want to. Because of you.”
I sat shaking on my porch, wrapped in a blanket listening and talking like he was never away from me.
This is how my world works. I wait, without wonder or judgement and get rewarded with the beautiful truth.
The return of my corporeal muse. He launched me out of bed at 7:47am wanting to write the story I’d promised. No hesitation, just flow. I missed him. He is welcome to eat my sleep.
Sent it to him with a smile, so he could wake up well and I set about working on something else long buried. Something he asked me to write, but I got to the middle and never found the end.
“And just like that…there he was.
He’d been gone for what felt like years, left her sleeping alone and cold. Wondering. Waking at the slightest noises. One frigid night, out of nowhere, he came scratching at her door.
Rougher than she remembered but still recognizable. Head hung low, thin from foraging. But beautiful.
Something in his teeth.
He dropped it at her feet. Eyes looking up, for what? Forgiveness? Oh honey, yes.
She smiled and realized he had brought her a fresh heart.
She didn’t question what it had belonged to. Simply cooked up her half with shallots and fresh sorrel, sliced his and fed it to him raw. Enjoying the sensation of him licking the blood from her fingers, feeling full and satisfied, and a little bit wild.
For all she knew it was his heart, and it was delicious.
~me
(From the story I never finished)
WoW,just WoW