I am writing on this rain-soaked page instead of its unblemished brother because I love the way that it sounds.
In grade-school, that was how I chose which books to read — the music they made in my hands.
I would savor the precious crackling peel of each spine in the stacks.
Did I romanticize too much then, too?
When I was 11, I saw Pride & Prejudice in a theater and thought: This is it.
I wanted to be the girl with wild eyes and “her hem six inches deep in mud” and I was.
I wore my hair like Lizzy’s for the next 7 years. My Mr. Darcy would recognize me then. He would pull the poems from my tongue and taste each word with the weighted consideration one ought to wear when bearing witness to someone’s soul.
I am not only her any longer, though.
I am still her — I make no effort, even now, to tame my curls or the embers in my eyes. I still hope against hope. I still pour my prayers into an antiquated cursive scrawl that I know already most cannot care to comprehend. It makes me savor their swirl of meaning all the more. I sit in the sunlight with Mary Oliver. I write on the rain-soaked pages first, because their music beneath my words just may well become a song.
But I am also her — 15, learning her body was the cost of keeping love alive. 19, begging for someone to see beyond skin. 20, and sure enough she could become whatever he needed. 26, and tumbling to the hardwood floor — a gasp in her lungs that wasn’t yet enough to fill the yawning emptiness cleaving her chest. 28, and lying on the laundry room floor — a solitary witness to the wails of walls and windows shivering beneath the blows of his fists. The house and I shook together. I hugged my knees in tight and prayed enough smoke might soon fill his lungs for this war to surrender in sleep.
31, and here.
In the suckling summer heat, wondering who and how and what and why.
I am her and she is me, and I am not still waiting for Mr. Darcy to place his cold hands beneath the press of my lips.
Still, I miss you to your marrow.
Still, I miss you to mine.
