faint of heart
by lena

you went away. you had to.
the world was bigger than the span of
my arms, my enfolding smile, the
surrounding environs of my heart.
and in a way, i didn’t begrudge you this—
my adventurous soul journeyed only as far as
the outer boundaries of my flesh, poised
ever-hesitant on the tips of my fingernails.
wing-clipped, i didn’t know how to fly.
but you did—and, well, you did.
you had time to love me, thoroughly,
though whether or not you did was another
issue entirely.
i often wondered just exactly how those
books filled you up, your neverending pursuit
of old-dead-white-guy-ology, wondered how
they filled more than just your bookshelves,
filled more than just your time—
wonder how they do so now, present-tense,
wonder if they ever started talking back.
but that would make it too easy, wouldn’t it?
you were ever a fan of the hard way.
i loved you for it.
but our story didn’t end like that, the
maudlin sunset, white horses parked in
a three-car garage, castle in suburbia
with white fence instead of moat. Well,
maybe you had the sunset, you certainly
drove off into it, greyhound style.
that’s the poison of love, that’s the
wrenching, aching, unquestionable beauty
of it—that it doesn’t always end in
pen-flourished happily ever after, that it’s
not infallible, it doesn’t always leave its
characters where they want or need to be,
me choking on your bus fumes or
something equally breath-interrupting.
that heartbreak could be so beautiful…
now in the wake of your away-motion
i flounder buoylike in this sea of
wonder, drift toward those thoughts,
shipwrecked on my sands, ocean floor
detritus wrecked mind—
your books, those secret lovers with whom
i could never compete,
coffee haze gaze, nicotine limbs, intoxication
of your tequila smile. it is your faults i
remember best, remember fondest.
i see her, though she has no face and
name, whoever she is or isn’t, a product of
your biological needs. (after all, the only
time you can really feel books is when
their sharp-ended pages make you bleed.
books can’t make you come.
unless they’re really good.
yours are too dry.)
maybe it’s my biological need to fill the
space i once occupied, a leftover habit
from my OCD-riddled days, no image must
be incomplete, even the post-me picture
of your bed.
that old game, that deception, compare and
contrast, as if the her-and-me really,
really matters. she is there, and i am not.
is it inconsequential that she is not me?
but i loved you, thoroughly. i took time, i made it
in your name. my chronos heart.
and what i made, i take to bed with me every
night, it shields me from the sun, the moon.
these days the light is blindingly harsh,
it hides nothing, though i remember
still a time of darkness, not so distant,
bus smoke blocking heaven.
my love, my dearest love,
you can’t find my knowledge in a book.
i won’t be hiding in the volumes of your
theories, your hero-worshipped authors’
words. my spine has nothing to do with
connecting book cover and page.
when you caress it, it is only the bookmuscles
you feel. none of my warmth, or hers,
if that even matters anymore.
books make for terrible pillows, nothing like
my breasts, my stomach.
they make unresponsive bedmates, they
know nothing of pillow talk art.
they know nothing of me, though how i’ve warred
with them. how i’ve fallen short every time.
they make for heavy weights on your bed,
hold it down when you think everything might
spin loose from gravity, in those manic stages
you’ll doubtless find yourself in. grad school is not for
the faint of heart.
neither is loving you. but books, the things
in which you search for all the answers,
in which you are so sure you’ll find precisely
what you need,
know nothing of that subject. nor will she.
you’d do better to search the shelves of my heart
for that.