When I went to the desert I met again the old crusher destroyer love of mine, the one who ripped me to shreds over & over, but it had been six years. Six years since I last saw him, running from me through the dark parkinglot, 3 in the morning after his 21st birthday, over parked cars, his long body too fast up the stairs & disappeared into his apartment building. When I went to the desert we met again, that last sighting still that last sighting, and we sat on a curb on a desert street and we uprooted all of the malicious & cruel things we'd done to one another. He was in an accident & cannot remember a lot about us. He can remember all of the badness, the desperation, the vengefulness, the gross vomitous terror of it. He can remember the tattoo of the mountain bluebird. He can remember the old canteen bag I use as a purse. He cannot remember the stencil I made, of my likeness with the words I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I'd spraypainted on the sidewalk in front of his apartment on Surf Ave. Just after we'd met & I was certain. I made it as a promise to never say I'm sorry, to never relinquish the blame for anything, should we never do anything to make an apology foam out. (You said I'm sorry the other day, and I give up on you) After the night, physical, close, struggled, serene, simple, devastating, shaking, I came to & we parted but I distinctly remember distinctly remembering all of him from six & seven years before, the way my thoughts collided with my brain with my heart, the way my heart split into dazzling pieces and I was able to scoop him up & roll along, and the bullets & the armor dissolving into me when he stopped being there. I was gushing, asking for him to stay awake with me that night because I was panicking, something I should admit to doing more frequently than I admit to doing frequently. He raised his giant head, his giant eyes half closed, a giant hand beneath a small familiar chin, and he listened, smiled dazedly, let me in effluvia. I couldn't move my thoughts in order, I was turned around and interrupting myself, I was shaken & my brain was pushing out through my mouth, and I was wet & chilled & hot & taken, and all I knew is that I was desperately grasping in the devastating familiarity that he should be desperately grasping for something, too. I'm the only one here
When we left the desert that morning, I sat in the backseat of the car watching the big saguaros slip away, the empty hot settling in, my panic lifting me out of mind. Suddenly, I was losing everything: the desert I so loved, but then, didn't I only love the desert because he brought me there, seven years before, and showed me this place, this lovely wild place, and I'd become obsessed in an effort to cling always to his absence, to the loss. I was losing everything: my bronze metal from a ski race when I was seven; he'd helped unwrap the chain from around a strap that morning, so I was paranoid he'd stolen it (I found it an hour later on the seat beneath my body), I was losing everything: my wallet in the gasstation, I was losing everything: my phone in a bookstore. I'd already given up on a mind, my heart, clearly, was thrown in pieces at him years & years ago, he had it, he kept it, he shuffled it around with him maybe without even knowing.
I thought I'd grown, become smarter more beautiful less panicked less desperate more full more certain more effective more intentional, and I realized in that tear-car with all of the loss around that someone owned me, that I'd have done anything for him then, I'd let him pick me apart even if it meant I'd never come back. I'm ready to be destroyed forever, if this is what you want- this is what I'd given in, to. How disappointed. I guess I'll just be like this forever, I thought
but all that dissolved a week later. Experience is the best therapy maybe, even though I become increasingly less popular in the world
