THE POETRY OF BEARS

First time they met, she wore black and red, in the most undesirable way. It was a black night, full of red thoughts. Armed with all the courage of a pimpled teenager, he tugged on the sexiness of her solitary and asked her to share his reefer. He would always speak of it afterward, that night he met the head-between-her-legs girl who took his hand. He said he appreciated her unwillingness to be a part of the world, which showed in the way her pants refused to clutch her thighs like skin. There was a good moment shared which needed to be stretched beyond one night. It was an easy time of the year, between summer’s jealous heat and winter’s cold embrace, which allowed her to show off skin along her arms. So when he took her to the movies to watch cartoon fish, she wore red again.
His name was Star in translation and she a Builder of Kingdoms. They became comfortable acquaintances, the punctuations in each other’s sentences. They were individuals who felt alright in each other. After a month spent chasing the tail-end of elusive emotions, they accepted the demise of their healthy togetherness. They had exchanged numbers and nothing else. In the landscape of the mind, one finds it hard to draw a face from memory, especially one that lacks phenomena. Faces do not always remain indelible.
He came unannounced, six months later. It was the day before her birthday but she refrained from telling him because she knew him well enough to know that he did not care for sentimentalities. He could be quite contrary at times, fuelling her up with good whiskey, then telling her that he did not like her drinking. It was not enough, stolen kisses in the dark smothered by long icy silences. Someone had to buckle, something had to interrupt their downward spiraling.
One clear afternoon, closed in by the fear of losing, he dared the onslaught of all the adversarial forces that love represented and claimed her as his one true thing. Her eyes became the most beautiful brown, strong and sure. He had used up too much time to just let her go. Those were his terms of endearment.
They moved into the new apartment, in the same easy time of year they first met. They had come full circle, Star and his Builder of Kingdoms. He was dawn, she was Dusk. They made their peace with the past and unraveled in each other. It wasa time of disclosure, of finally knowing each other. He told her of his addictions and she said she had promiscuous tendencies. There must have been hope floating all about because the confessions only strengthened their new-born faith in each other. Accepting and letting go became daily requirements. They grew into each other and friends said they were good together. Her good tea served with warm conversations worked well with his guitar playing, and made them popular folk. He brought home apple juice and chocolate brownies to a home filled with their surrendering. At night, she tied his hair in the way only she knew how.
When Christmas came, a decision was made. They must have a part for the fish in the bowl, kissing under the mistletoe. It was an evening of friends, his and hers, theirs together and everyone drank. The joints loosened as words began to flow just like the wine she was ravishing and there in the last drop at the bottom of the glass, she recognized a freedom in him, of which she had no part. Sense of insecurity damaged the night. Everyone left. They were both amazed by the amount of hate she was capable of feeling.
The love dissipated in degrees. He drew into himself and the pills. She held onto dear life and refused to pull him out of his funk. They made excuses in their head, why their love making felt automatic and alien. Layers started to peel off, like and onion, revealing strong acidic truth. Resentment had grown like weed in their magic garden. She found herself unable to forgive him his intoxications which angered him. Winter had finally come, in a house that had had summer nights and burning beds, all December.

‘I did what I did because he was a piece of him. He was a good friend, to him first and then much later on, to me. I needed help recapturing my broken dream and he was there, full and willing, the door to a world I was cast out of. We talked of times past, experiences shared and of my hard, fierce love. We sat, Buddha-style, facing each other and in that moment of just enough wine and music, I put on his face the face of the man that held us together and fell into him. The eyes see what they want to see, not what is real and in front of them. If I told myself enough times that it was not wrong to give myself to two people, sometimes I believed myself. Days folded into each other until two very separate people became one and I had created an entity for myself, a being easy to live with because it was neither friend nor lost lover. It might have lasted forever had it not been all in my head. I have reconciled reality and fantasy. I now have neither friend not lover, lost twice over.’


‘The night she left the house, I called my posse over and celebrated my freedom. I found I had lost myself in her so hard and deep, there didn’t seem a way out so I jumped in the vortex of a whirlpool where existing did not necessitate thinking. I leaped into cunts that welcomed me without judgement and let me go without regret. I lost her face inside the smoke that constantly swirled around me since she fled. After a while, my old life reclaimed me and it felt like she had never been there at all. That was before the betrayal. She had been reclaimed by her old life too, fat full with promiscuity. I realized I was wrong. I have not forgotten her. She lives in me and every time I think of the early nineties, her face comes up with a vengeance like it was yesterday.’


‘ She was his woman and he was her pearl. He would talk about her late into the night. Of all he said I understood, she was an angel, dark and mysterious. I had to meet her eventually. You see, he wanted me to believe he was right in choosing her as his harbor of surrendering. He was right, of course. She was all that, and more. I watched them rearrange their lives to fit each other in. they failed most of the time, but in spite of all their fights and disagreements, they seemed to rise above conflicts to meet each other somewhere among the clouds. But they were both fire so it was only a matter of time before they killed each other. One must never outshine the other.’ ‘ it was the way her eyes looked like two huge pools of tears that made me shelter her inside. I always knew she would be his forever. There are some truths you just cannot run away from. Her love for him was one of those truths. For a time, I feasted on his scraps. I picked up the pieces of the life he shattered and tried with all my heart to make it whole and new. I failed, miserably. She was the best and the worst thing that happened to me.’


When lurking jaws and joints of Time come of age, the past will be resolved and there will once again be clouds on the tongue to go with a sliver of God on a platter.