That they met at all was
enough of a breaking.
That their lives crossed at all
in the spaciousness of their worlds
was a blessing.
The first time he saw her
was in a dark bar,
through smoke and dim light
while bad bands played noisy music.
The second was in pure daylight,
as she walked through pretty grass,
a purse over one shoulder,
sunglasses, soft hair, smiles.
All of this goes on of course,
outside of reality,
beyond the life he knew,
too much sense of past guilts
and future losses.
It was at a diner at noon
with pleasant talk and
the illusion that the talk can bring
that he started to feel it.
The breaking of one life
and the opening of a new one.
- It’s not enough to point out
the torment he felt.
Nor the remorse for the thoughts
that filled his head.
Those were real;
they resonated in his bones
like thunder in glass boxes.
It never came from her, of course.
The fantasy came from him.
She was free of all that, pure of it,
unaware that the man,
had created it from air,
sensation,
and romance,
from clean air, from
the air of innocence.
- That other people were involved
goes without saying.
People surrounded them in
a myriad of ways,
serving as buffers,
distractions.
He started to love her,
and the breaking became real.
- His life continued,
but as if in a dream.
Moments played out
as if under water. The real world
was only with her.
A drive
through traffic, music on a radio,
laughter about lives, shared intimacy
of thoughts and beliefs.
Her hair down, on her shoulders,
the smell of her, always
the smell of her left behind
on phones and in his car.
Her hands, arms, legs,
a way she turned to talk,
a laugh, a way the light reflected
off her like glass.
And her lovers.
She needed his comfort there,
his understanding.
Her life was racing by her,
and the men she found provided
something, peace, happiness,
security, a sense of touch,
of sweetness, satisfaction.
She told him, knowing that he
could help, that he could view these
things objectively. Friends,
after all. And he did.
He distanced himself and gave advice,
all the time, picturing her hunger for these men,
imagining the hunger,
the hunger always.
During it all his insides
spun.
Why them?
Others whose names shot
in and out of his mind like
slips of paper in windstorms.
Others who loved her,
who received her hunger,
who sated her,
who touched that skin with hands
incapable of sensation,
and whose mouths covered her own,
whose waists were encircled by
her fine,
white legs,
who came inside her softness
like strangers passing in trains
or like strangers passing in rain.
- That he stayed awake nights
goes without saying.
That he drove silent, terrible
miles at night to her home,
to touch her door,
or dialed her number to hear
her voice. None of that needs
to be explained.
That he never understood.
That he longed for her.
He felt the breaking complete itself
on a drunken night,
highway driving,
the lights of passing cars and
roadside gas stations flashing
in his eyes
like madness,
like lightning in funhouse.
- That it wasn’t real,
that the love was one-sided,
started the last breaking.
Of course, that is how these things end.
The truth is made known,
and one is left wondering,
‘how has this come to pass?’
‘how has this come to be?’
‘where has reality broken into the
illusion?’
He told her in the darkness of his car.
In the blackness he hid
and said things before
rehearsed in quiet,
in mad moments of delusion
and fantasy. And in her eyes, he saw the
reaction.
Nothing. Pity. Sadness.
But nothing there
of reciprocal love.
Not pity, perhaps, but mercy,
melancholy, and in the instant
the words left his mouth,
he knew he had made mistakes
far greater than before,
mistakes unfixable.
He knew in a flash that her
hunger, whatever it was,
whatever it was for,
could never include him.
That her hunger would
never encircle him,
that she would never.
- That they walked a ways,
and took drinks
in a nearby bar,
and made small talk of days
to come lent a closure
to the mistake.
That she made normalcy a function
of the next days let him
know that the moment could
be saved, if not
forgotten.
A phone call.
Morning light.
Spirals of dust on a blind.
The quiet hum of a fan and
the comforting buzz of the receiver. He said things more, of course.
The explanation.
The beer, the night, the time,
“What I meant to say was…”
No matter. The illusion broken now,
the next breaking was
of his heart.
And he told her of it.
Used the words as they appeared to him
out of air.
“I meant it. I meant every word.”
He should have hid it,
to show strength,
to show her he was above
the smallness of his
foolish passion.
He should not show himself foolish,
ashamed.
He should not have shown her
the pieces that remained,
the shards and shreds,
the last few fragments,
the breakings of his heart.
- That he would be expected to recover,
was understood. The friendship demanded
sense and responsibility,
and he felt it as much as she did.
That he played it fast and loose goes
without question.
That he promised his own healing
goes without saying.
“I’ll make it,” he said.
“I’ll forget it. I will make sense of it.”
- That he never did, of course,
was inevitable.
That he recovered some of the reality
was enough.
That she believed it was true made it possible.
That he loved her regardless,
completed the breakings.
One last afternoon.
A drive on feeders and interchanges.
His dream is to keep going.
To steal her away from her world,
and to leave his behind.
That she feels none of that for him
matters less and less.
That he knows the truth
doesn’t stop him.
The car feels like a time machine.
Her eyes looking straight ahead,
suggest compliance, assent.
They drive in circles around the city.
- She dreams of a future lover,
not him, never him, of course.
He dreams of distant places
of breaking free
of loving her
with madness
and anguish,
of a last breaking
with the world.
Of hunger.
Of one pure moment
where his love is enough
to fool them both.
- W.T. Pfefferle
