Desire Knows the Limits of the Body

I’m tired, I’m not allowed to say this, not allowed to show this, why.

 

The fog lifts – or dissolves, who knows, who was watching – and suddenly the far range of the Taconics is visible, deep purple with bursts of red and gold here and there. How much sorrow there is in sex, way down deep near the bottom, where desire knows the limits of the body. Always ask: what is really going on.

 

It's no secret why psychotherapy caught on when it did, just as we were sliding into a technological nightmare (which psychology has deepened rather than ended). Taking down the Hindu prayer flags. Many languages between us.

 

You got good at hiding but something happened to you on the inside as a result, those are the effects you live with now.

 

How happy Chrisoula is these days, how I sit quietly watching her, grateful for this note on which to end.

 

Not agreeing on what music to play while driving, settling on an old Windham Hill compilation, one of those winter ones, keeping the volume low. The twentieth century is not finished with us. I am not a righteous king writing psalms beside moonlit streams. We who are alive because a long line of somebodies before us survived long enough to procreate. Chips with salsa, Friends re-runs, her feet on my lap.

 

“We were not born with masks,” my aunt proclaims, to which Fionnghuala responds, “were you born with clothes,” and the look of anger that flashes across both my mother’s and aunt’s faces drives me to my feet in protective rage but Fionnghuala simply sits at the table and stares both women down, teaching me yet again what is strength and what is not. 

 

Second guesses, bane of joy everywhere.

 

And yet on the long drive home we are unexpectedly happy, all our sentences mingling and commingling, like the drunks of my childhood trying to finish each other's jokes. Gazing at willow trees I briefly allow myself to remember how beautiful and innocent I am.

 

This savanna we swore we would never leave.