Hesitating At Your Door -journal notes of my failing marriage
Hesitating At Your Door
Can’t we just be friends?
Instead of lovers?
That’s mean, I know.
To have that kind of space
where we don’t have to worry
about history climbing into bed with us.
Or about the momentum of movement
from repeated failed dance lessons
which keeps creeping in
and steering the direction of us into stuck.
The way a cross threaded bolt
grabs a nut into frozeness.
No matter how many times
you back off
and try again.
Maybe this time I can file away
the bent metal peaks
and clean out
the filled spiral valleys
and rethread this thing.
But I’m tired.
I am so tired.
And I’m sad.
I am so sad.
About what might fail.
You are recently quieter.
Recently kinder.
Approaching approachable.
Even a sweetness remeniscent.
Have you changed?
Is angers fire out?
Or is it just embers waiting for air?
I stand with the honesty of present me.
At your door.
Which seems to want me
to walk through it.
I hesitate.
I don’t know if I want to.
Why do I hesitate?
Is this you at your new tenderest
and ready for me to come in?
At this same moment
I was just sliding the door
toward the closed position.
Just to see how it felt.
To wonder
what other rooms
may feel like
If home can be felt
outside of home for me.
Added to my own sadness,
I feel sadness for you.
I don’t know if I can try.
Again.
Are we finally and fatally becoming
what we needed to have become too late?
I don’t know.
Nobody told me how to do this.
Dad? Mom? Are you there?
You don’t know either.
It’s ok. I know.
This ones on my own.
I’m certain of this.
On my own.
This part.
The last choosing step at least.
I am certain
that this uncertainty
is all mine to own.
I hear the beautiful humanity
who’ve held my hand
Through the corridors and halls
to get to this door
saying -
“Ok Joel.
We’re here now.
It’s ok.
Let go here while you choose
what you know.
That which no one else
can know for you.”
What is this hesitancy
I feel in me?
Isn’t this the place of quietness
and possibility to heal,
isn’t this what you wanted all along?
It’s here.
What are you waiting for?
I don’t know. I’m holding back.
I’m nice to her.
But I’m not carefree-nice.
I am one-hand-in-my-pocket nice.
And she is two-hands-around-me nice.
She is I-love-you nice.
I am I-love-you-back-but-I don’t-want-to-lean-in-and-giggle-like-I’m-all-ready-to-hope-again nice.
So — — breathe — -think — — feel.
Ok.
This is my step.
Alone. Almost.
I will step through this door
holding the hands
of the friends I forsook for you.
So you could be healed while I cried.
I’m done crying.
I need to announce to you
that The Day The Music Died, is over.
A new song is rising in me
and I will be joining
what threatened
your runaway mind fears.
And perhaps that will be
the test I need
for me to see if the man I am
and want to be will be
the one you want also.
To see if we can still be a we.
Perhaps.
Perhaps my hesitant hand will turn the knob.
Take hands from pockets.
Laugh into your ear “I love you’s”
Perhaps.
Will you take me this way?
Celebrate not tolerate me?
Perhaps — is getting easier to sit with.
My face is flushed red and warm.
Today is red.
And I’m still holding hands with my tribe who doesn’t know
how to turn off love and laughter.
