Lying here, long legs entwined, fingers laced, I listen to him breathe, my mind spinning with what I want to say , to ask, not daring to voice the words. Words need to be chosen carefully; we are both cautious, alert, on guard against those which send up barriers, that bring on misunderstanding and confusion. Neither one wants to be bound, yet I long for not a commitment, but rather a sense that the “we” he is so hesitant about would somehow be allowed to be voiced, to breathe, live, be enjoyed, continue as it has been, peaceful and easy, without either one feeling bound, trapped, unfree.
I let myself slide off to memories of another sleeping man, traveling with me in a drifting moonlit canoe, silent hissing paddles slipping through dark velvet water. This man lives now only in my mind, no longer sharing what I hold most clear, most precious of all my life’s moments. Cool night swimmings and morning tussles in the “graben bed”; this means nothing to anyone but me, the more than forty years ago me. I had courage then to say and do what I felt: “I’m falling”; he answered with warm arms, soft voice in my hair, “Go ahead and fall, I’ll catch you”. Later lost all, but never regretted the telling, the doing of what those words led me to.
There at the lake, same-named as my other two most-loved men, father and brother, now also lost to me in this life. In my mind I speak, “I love you both beyond measure, always.” I know that they know, and love me in return. Slipping through quiet water, following the Milky Way across the lake cove, now somehow becomes the loon-filled bay, headed across to BlueHill, another man now asleep forever, a man who loved me and hurt me, encouraged me and beat me down, not with hands but with words. Words not carefully chosen. Healing has been long and difficult, but I have survived worse, am stronger than any one will ever know. I have made it across the bay and back.
And so it returns to words, the telling or withholding of sounds, syllables, meanings, intents, content, interpretations, inferences, all the use and misuse of the language we both love and with which we are so accomplished, yet so hesitant to voice. I turn over, and hold the words inside, knowing I will keep them, that someday the time might never come for me to whisper them. Will he find them?