unscumbled

I watch Libby hold Naomi

Naomi is crying. The moment is private, painful.
I should help, I should leave.
But I watch

because the moment is also beautiful, this picture of what love is,
what it is at its most basic.
Intimacy
Someone to hold you
Someone to let you fall apart, be strong when you are vulnerable
Someone who sees the pain that makes others uncomfortable, drawing near anyway,
not to exploit - no solutions, no demands
just a witness beside you

And all my complicated thoughts fall away
my angst and tortured prevarications
my inability to articulate what the fuck I am looking for
This is it, I think. This is what I most want.
I want someone to love me like this.
I want to trust someone enough to be this weak

To stop protecting partners from my emotions
Like I can't really be me
Like I can't speak at full volume
Or share what I am really thinking
Being polite all the time
because the messiness displeases others

Take off the shade
Burn at full brightness
Be it exhausting, trouble, a tangle of yarn, this is my beauty
I scream fun
I sparkle
I hold on with both hands
not your problem
I know myself - just listen
These are my colors, unscumbled

Let me crackle
or let me radiate

no distaste
no retreat

Make the small talk I can't at the funeral, so the walls can melt over my face

Answer my left-out petulance simply, "Just dance with me." 

Hear someone throw the gauntlet, catch my eye, slip keys back in pocket
"You're missing her point," at my flank, with relish
No fear of me
my face out to the sun, yours a smile
You are this.

But you are also deliberate separateness, stinging silence, vague uncertainty
I am a place that you visit.
You leave and are fine, shaking it off, while I am wrung out, and empty
Looking for reassurance
So perceptive...but you don't see this

And Libby said the best thing in the world
She said,
"Do you know how long it took me to learn to do that?"

Maybe this is intimacy, too.
The learning
The falling down
The conversations on texts and voice mail and through eyes that aren't meeting that seem just as awful as these talks always have been
And yet aren't
A bit of patience
A bit of apology
Awareness
A breath
A glimmer
I'm not more trusting
I'm still me
I don't trust men, I won't, that won't change
Except I think that even though I don't trust you to come back because you're a man
I think you might
because you did before
I think I might be able to count again instead of spewing
protective venom shell around me
I think
maybe
no supernova this time
Maybe no gravel flying out from under my tires

And maybe this is intimacy
Not the kind I'm aiming for
Not the kind with smiles and laughter
Not the kind that makes me smug
But maybe the kind that I'd recognize from outside
If I wasn't crying
If you weren't learning how to hold me
If I weren't learning to respond to your, "Ouch."
I'm not receiving comfort now

But I might be ready, 

soon