It wasn’t that he made me walk two miles uphill that day.
Okay, it was, who am I kidding?
That little event, so innocuous at the time,
threw my life in a direction destined for failure.
He was the man I would have said yes to, had he asked, but he didn’t.
Had he asked, I would have written my bad poetry for him,
and he would laugh at my use of metaphor,
maybe he would have called me brilliant,
maybe he would have given me a wet kiss because he was flattered.
He would have learned to love me, I’m certain of it,
people do it all the time,
ask those in arranged marriages,
they’ll say it can happen,
but I’m not sure he even liked me all that much, let alone loved me.
Maybe I was too easy.
He knew all he had to do was swagger in a room,
walk up to me, say my name,
say hey, want to grab a few beers,
and I would have dropped an atom bomb had I been holding one,
(once he wore a brown turtleneck and I almost fainted, he looked that good, something about how it made his skin shine,
so I bought him a cup of coffee, hands shaking as I poured, and mumbled something stupid about the weather).
Then there was this one night, long before the fateful walk uphill,
the night he took out his guitar and played for me,
Blind Faith, his face intense and lovely in the dark,
and that night I knew I was a goner,
I knew in the way something tumbled in my belly,
maybe you call that being easy, I call it being pretty damn lucky,
or the first time we kissed for hours
and he didn’t try to fuck me,
how his hands felt on my skin, so gentle for a large man,
I remember how he kissed my belly button, then looked up at me and smiled,
he was drunk, I doubt he would remember,
I was drunk, but stone cold sober,
and I was a goner then too.
You might think walking uphill for two miles with a man who made me a goner is nothing to complain about,
but I copped an attitude,
fucker making me walk, who the hell does he think he is?
So I left, and I don’t even remember how I said goodbye,
and married someone I told myself I would learn to love, I was certain of it,
just ask those in arranged marriages,
they’ll tell you it can happen,
but it didn’t happen, not at all.
I spent many years blaming him for making me walk uphill for two miles,
convinced I would have chosen differently had he said,
I’ll go get the car and come get you.
But who am I kidding?
All these years later, I finally realize that I never once,
not one time, told him what he meant to me.
I played it so cool, because feeling like a goner when I wasn’t ready to feel like a goner scared the heck out of me.
I played it cool. The classic story of the betrayer playing the betrayed.
Honestly, those two miles uphill were a cakewalk compared to the thirteen years I’ve hoofed it uphill alone.
Serves me right.
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