a coat so warm

I only saw the edges of myself.

Leaning on the wooden bar, waiting for the bartender, I watched two other women walk in. They walked up and asked me to make them a drink. I looked at them. They were snippy about it, “Can you get behind the bar and make us a drink?” I laughed. I told them I wasn’t the bartender. They asked why I was dressed like one then. I looked down at my white shirt, dark pants, and bright red tie. I turned back to the bar without answering and waited. The bartender came out of the back room dressed like me. I tried not to feel stupid. I tried to be easy. I ordered my date’s Manhattan and a whiskey, neat. I walked slowly back to her, sitting there on the couch. She smiled at me. Her drink sloshed a little and dripped onto the table when I set it down. I carefully wiped the edges of her glass for her. “I spill things,” I told her, “I do that.” She smiled at me, “And look how you took care,” she said and waved it away.

We sat and talked. I told her about the women thinking I was the bartender. She ran my tie through her fingers and asked me where I found it. She sighed in this sexy little way that made me feel good. Easy. She calmed me. She smoothed my nerves like the tie between her fingers. I liked her. I couldn’t tell if she was shy or forward. Somehow she was both. Anyway, this isn’t the point. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. The point is that at that time, in those moments. There were important things happening. Important things that I didn’t recognize. I had no capacity to recognize anything. I wasn’t really there. I wasn’t sitting inside myself. I was this body on the outside, smoothed, dapper, pressed and steamed and this tangled, unrecognizable knot on the inside. And I didn’t know it.


http://bdswain.com/post/57265590878/dearbutch

message in a bottle.

Failing and Flying - Jack Gilbert


Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.