backflash

this morning, in the midst of trying to think about something, someone, I thought about something else. I was climbing a rope and it frayed and then I climbed the fray.

I thought about, years ago, sitting on my old apartment steps with an old boyfriend; I was leaving him. I had a box of stuff (red wings from a halloween costume, some shirts, some trinkets) loaded into my car. the conversation we had that day revolved, not around the relationship I was leaving, but around the life I would live without him - he could understand my leaving only by imagining that my subsequent life would necessarily be magnificent, full of laurels and bright lights. before I left, he said something like, "maybe I'll see you after you take over the world." I also think now that I understood my leaving in those terms as well. I was going somewhere and I could not take him with me.

of course, the problem with those delusions of grandeur is that they are necessarily disappointing. what's more is that I realized that those specific delusions existed largely to help me extract myself from a brutal and withered relationship.

this morning I remembered that conversation and I glanced around my living room and thought that, years later and no laurels and no lights, how strangely contented I am with the life I've led since leaving those steps and that little town. I looked at the relics I've accumulated, my k. waldrop collages and my little postcard of a parked yellow car j'lyn gave me for my birthday and the pretty green vase joe brought me back from france and my rhode island license plate that I held onto for two years after leaving the state and my christmas tree I always have on the ledge between my book room and my living room and the stained glass windows I bought for david but never gave to him because it seemed too manufactured and the rocking chair I used to believe was haunted and the stacks of music I have near the stereo, none of which I had when I left georgia and the books and papers piled along the wall where there's space. and yes these things are objects but they are markers of a life, star-points in a constellation.

I thought about then and those steps and that leaving and I thought about where I thought I'd go and I thought about where I am and I laughed. it was a good laugh and long. the clock I bought a week after leaving that town in georgia made its ticking in the corner.