Every now and then, and more so in the last little while, words well up in me like frantic little bubbles, drift up, and threaten to break on the surface of this all-too-still and stagnant pond once known as my blog. I am returning reluctantly today, but writing proves a wonderful distraction, as today's Saturday shift at work feels like a prison sentence. No services are scheduled, no jarring rings of the telephone annouce the departure of souls into the ether, no grieving families are arriving to collect sad, plastic containers filled with the pulverized bone fragments of their dead loved ones.
I've just returned from the overcast coolness of the cremation garden. Absently, to fill the time, I wandered among the brick walls, examining the plaques affixed to the niche spaces, silently calculating the ages of those entombed therein. I stared wistfully into the raindrops adorning the petals of pale roses and passionately-pink gerbera daisies, the tokens for the dead, seeing my own shadowy, transient reflection revealed a hundred times therein.
I have loved again, since last I wrote, and I have lost again. In many ways, this was the bitterest loss of all. A sweet, gentle musical virtuoso, a man over ten years my junior, and fraught with his own complex issues to which I was never truly privy, but which I only longed to assuage with my kisses. The moments we had together, aside from our musical relationship, were precious few. Despite the ardor of his caresses, and our many intimate conversations, I always felt as though it were all being stolen from someone else, a woman infinitely more virtuous and worthy who waited somewhere for him to find her, while I wasted his time with my unworthiness.
How foolish to fall in love with a colleague with whom one works closely toward a final creative goal! Now, the fruits of this labor taste only of ash. I cannot bear to listen to recordings of our concert, to hear the painful precision of his fingers on the piano keys, how each note sings out as a perfect pearl spinning on a length of wire. If I catch myself listening, I will remember how these same fingertips pressed languidly against my lips while he eagerly kissed my neck, his hot breath upon my skin, or how he ran a skillful thumb over my teeth, my pointed upper canines, when, with my lips half-parted, I sighed with heady delight and a thick, trembling want of him, pulling him closer to me, wishing to become a part of him.
Sometimes, now that he is gone, the helplessness I feel about him fills my entire body. My heart thumps dully against it, as though my ribcage were packed with cotton. Words I cannot say press achingly upon my tongue, stream out mutely from the corners of my eyes when I lay in bed at night. But he will hear me no more. His ears are stopped up to me; his eyes are blind.
I also shun the poison of social intrigue. I avoid the company of most women, and of all men, burying myself deeper than ever in my books: religious histories, the tragedies of British queens, novels set in World War II France. Learning that there is greater sadness in the world than anything I could ever feel.
I think back to days long gone, when I was a neon bulb, a coquette, social and flirtatious, never without companionship, fashioning strings of words into hot lassos of double-meaning, with which I ensnared men's clumsy hearts, only to cast aside the rinds when I had sucked the marrow clean. I was Anne Boleyn, then, a true courtesan. But now, I am repaid for the haughty cruelty of my youth. I embark instead on painful journey of self-improvement and reflection, away from the dazzling throngs, and I yield the glittering diadem of court life to hearts more fearless.
