I must stop contacting her.
She stopped contacting me.
You couldn’t hear a pin drop.
I think it was the love factor.
When you discuss your soul, it always sidetracks you from your nous.
You say, well, if only I hadn’t broken up with her 3 months ago.
If only her boyfriend hadn’t broken up with her 18 years ago.
She doesn’t seem to like her heart broken.
This way, she only has it broken every 18 years.
The reverberations are less painful.
Me, well, I thought I’d get over it.
I even look at her face and see someone else.
Still, you know, I think she sees me.
I think she loves me.
I’m getting my haircut this weekend—the way she likes it.
Problem is: I can’t afford it, but I’m doing it anyway.
She won’t see it. She won’t hear it. It will be the “Helen Keller” haircut. Therefore, I might as well go gray and look like a nurse who works in the ER in Eerie, PA.
*
Last night I had a dream I was in a facility.
You know those institutions where you suspect that the people in charge have not received their master’s?
Well, the person in charge was my neighbor from high school.
I was writing her bio.
I assumed she got married, divorced and had kids.
Nope.
She had a master’s, almost a PhD, in kids.
She was pissed that I assumed she didn’t have one.
A master’s in education.
No kids.
No husband.
But a master’s.
These days you can’t assume that all poor white folk don’t have a master’s degree in education, or you might end up in a correctional facility with them; that your mother might leave you there, in a glass cage; or that the lady at the token booth, nay, the cop, might stick you in one, after she gives you a ticket and says, “Go young lady, you deserve a month, maybe two, in a correctional facility,” where you meet your old neighbor, Adele Richardson, who has since changed her name, has a master’s degree, and is the Master of the facility.
*
This might be because your ex loves Orange is the New Black, wants a girlfriend like you, but you ruined it, by seeking advice from your rich cousin in Michigan, who got ditched by a tattooed Caucasian boy who quotes Burroughs; who wants no one in the family, including his
ophthalmologist wife, to know he was a temporary fag; and you vow never to listen to this fucked up, rich, wealthy, suicidal cousin who once got dragged down the stairs by his brother.
This cousin advised you to break up with your woman, the love of your life, who now refuses to respond to your messages, especially when you mention that you love her, that the heart is what matters, even though every day you tell her to have a nice day, and she responds likewise to have a nice day, but gets scared off, like you are making waves, atomic bombs, in her circulatory system; you are sending electrodes to murder her, like you did the first time, when she lay down her life for you, made herself available, for the first time in 18 years, to love another person, to kiss you, open her house to you, and you spat on her, cause all the other bitches, including your brother, yes, all the other brother fucking bitches…WELL, none of them wanted you to have love.
*
My girl was po.
But she dug me.
And her daughter loved me.
*
After not contacting her, I texted her.
From a boat.
I sent the “l” word.
I told her that me and my friend Lisa, who gave “your daughter an expensive fly catcher,” are riding on a boat in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, watching the wind blow and we “miss you.”
She wrote, “I miss you, too.”
*
Then I texted, about a week later, after we exchanged pictures of sunrise/sunset: “Sometimes there is so little to learn except what the heart tells us. Enjoy your day.”
No response.
No response.
Dead.
The world is: Dead.
I am dying.
The Gods are not upon us.
I am falling beneath an equator.
I cannot subsist on jelly beans.
I am not Ronald Reagan.
She is not even sending me a heart.
*
I was Magda Goebbels telling Joseph to date the Nazi propaganda film starlets. I don’t give a shit if you fuck Marlene Dietrich. I don’t give a shit if you fornicate Lida Baarová—the Czech actress/slut.
*
Even my shrink felt the illicit word “love” came through my text to “her” like a storm trooper sticking his rifle at the unsuspecting Jewish couple on their way to Auschwitz.
*
Then came the iron curtain after the sunsets—my sunsets, my emoticons, her emoticons; thought I’d visit her, she’d visit me, the Berlin Wall would come down, it would be 1989 again, would exchange jelly beans with Gorbachev; fuck Stalin, fuck Hitler, fuck my cousin and his faux faygelah affair.
*
The dead heart is the one you dissect from a cat cadaver in a 1980s remedial science class cause you ain’t ever gonna be in AP biology, even if you have a crush on the AP biology teacher.
*
I would like to ignite a word or two, but that would take another month of non-communication and I’m not the taciturn type.
*
I go on Jdate and find unattractive girls.
I spend thousands in therapy thinking she finds other girls attractive.
I guess it doesn’t matter if she finds other girls attractive.
The point is that she doesn’t write me.
*
We gather great minds from Erasmus to Sophocles to Beyonce to Fox News correspondents related to her, that being her mother, who likely caused the breakup, or my rich cousin who encouraged the breakup.
*
None will cause her to kiss me, me to drive to her house and sleep in her bed or break through the awkward moments where I would like to hug her in the shower.
*
We mourn the loss of what was, could have been but never was—the profound theorists who never listened, or were scared off, never had the chutzpah to dance in the motion of moths, who petered out when the light went on, who went dizzy in the camera of anger, and let the birds fly triumphant in the night air, rather than residing in the coolness of her arm’s embrace, not letting the soul talk, but rather our mothers, and her brother, and my brother, and all those beasts interfere.
