The night before.
Previously published on park manor circa 2009.
Something always brings me back to you.
The gilt framed mirror in the bathroom confirms my deepest fear. Dark circles. I haven’t slept in days, nothing new. Coffee and cigarettes, diners until the wee hours of the morning, life as a soundtrack playing in the background.
There, we are the same. No matter what I say or do I’ll still feel you here ’til the moment I’m gone. Nomads, the creatives, with paint-stained hands, callused fingertips and wanderlust. WE are waiting for our big break.
You hold me without touch. I am waiting for him to open up. You keep me without chains.
How many times have we called it quits? I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your reign. I pace the floor. Back and forth, from the bed to the door, trailing a finger along the antique dresser.
How many times did he say “I can’t do this anymore”? Set me free, leave me be. Then he got down on one knee and I put every time I cried myself to sleep right out of my head.
A proposal is a promise. I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity. A guarantee that the charade of this big white dress and publicly spoken vows will not be in vain.
A reassurance that the boy can keep up his grown-man façade – But you’re on to me and all over me – and won’t drive away one day in a tour van, tattooed arm hanging out the window, forgetting all about the girl in the song.
He is a magnet for misfits and rebels, the encourager of long-shot dreams, the denouncer of practicality. I am cautiously carefree, a closeted adventurer, the voice of reason. You loved me ’cause I’m fragile, when I thought that I was strong. He is smoke and mirrors.
This love makes me transparent, vulnerable. He is everything I want, the problem and the cure, my addictive personality’s worst nightmare.
Tonight, I am full of clichés and Pinot Noir. Never the type to pin all her hopes and dreams on a man, and yet he takes my breath and holds it in his hands. Set me free, leave me be. My heart is tattered from the years on my sleeve. I live for a smile, a look, a sign.
I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity.
At the eleventh hour, with the adjoining hotel rooms full of family and friends, I am afraid. I live here on my knees as I try to make you see that you’re everything I think I need –
Our common ground is rocky at best — you’re neither friend nor foe though I can’t seem to let you go. Tomorrow I pour myself onto the altar; he will hide behind an easy smile and serious eyes. We start our forever on uneven footing, and if the old ballroom downstairs could predict the future as well as it holds onto the past, I’d let it read my palm and seal my fate.
The one thing that I still know is that you’re keeping me down.
I am a mistress already, second fiddle to a lifestyle and a dream. He will try his best. His love is honest, but hesitant and flawed. He will take everything I have and more. And I will gladly give it. You’re on to me, on to me, and all over.
Something always brings me back to you.
Ready or not, here comes the bride.
**Song lyrics italicized, Sarah Bareilles “Gravity”