Tiny Lights
page thirteen
Contest 2010
People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.—We are happy to regard the one before whom we shine as light. Friedrich Nietzsche
decorated with yellow and red grosgrain ribbon and brass. ―You are of high rank,‖ I said, as I touched his medals. I praised his talk. He put his arm around me in the back seat of the cab. We talked work, we talked theories, we talked all night. We spoke about children going through divorce—did the break-up have to hurt them? Each of us coming out of long term relationships. After dinner we danced. I could smell his peach-olive cologne as he removed his stiffer military coat. His medals tinkled when he took it off. His shirt stuck to me while we danced after everyone else went home. He fluttered his eyelashes over my closed eyes. You are the fresh air I need, he said to me as I was thinking this about him. He asked me upstairs. I told him I would not until he was a very single man. He knew I was right, being Catholic, and from my part of Pennsylvania. We walked and talked until the October sun came up and the breakfast crew began their day. Tell me what you do all day, every day, at home, he clasped my hand. We spoke of our favorite foods while he walked me to my hotel room. I lay in bed an hour and he called to invite me to lunch. As we walked out of the hotel, he said he had to get something in his room. As I stood outside waiting, he said, Lunch is being served here. I looked in and there on the white tablecloth were all the foods I‘d described the night before: rare lamb, steamed fresh spinach with garlic butter, Caesar salad, pickled beets, and cherry pie. Each one in porcelain surrounded by silver. We sat down. He watched me eat every bite. We wrote, sent poems, called, made plans. I want to tuck you in, he whispered at the end of our phone calls. He moved into his own apartment. I stayed in mine. He couldn‘t continue with me after some months because he had many children, complications with his divorce, military missions, responsibilities. He was the President‘s analyst. As months passed, I drifted away, married 5 years later. He was still managing a messy divorce. We met on Union Street in San Francisco when I was seven months pregnant. I wore a red velvet maternity dress. He loved my belly, patted it. We ate dinner in warm summer air, walked for two miles until I had to go home. We spoke of our counseling work. He spoke of his missions, his duty to the Pentagon and his country. He loved serving. Letters, a meeting five years later at Letterman, when he came out for an AMA conference. His divorce was final. Mine was in process. I drove to the city to see him. He held a party in his room, one of those Victorian houses for generals and commanders that I‘d always wanted to visit. Old, wooden, three-story clapboards with stories to tell, that I drove by all the years in between our meetings. I loved him, had loved him for fifteen years; our common pasts tied us together. We wore our morality every day, we were the high standards of our generation, he on one coast, me on the other. Living out our caring of the life we‘d been given through tireless service to children. He pulled me close and said he wanted me on his lap. I moved
back, getting my bearings. I could see what he had in mind and wasn‘t sure any more. We spoke about our futures. He thought he would likely marry the woman who‘d been his secretary; she understood his military obligations, his marriage to his work, his many responsibilities. She wasn‘t a beauty, he said, it wasn‘t a passionate union. We both knew I would ask more of him. Let me wash your face. Now your feet. I’ve wanted us all my life, as far back as I can remember. He brushed my hair, all my hair. We made love for all we‘d shared together, all we‘d lost, all the love that needed saying. He discovered me. He recognized me. He watched me sleep. My cheek felt safe against his broad chest. He left at dawn. He called later to say he‘d found a bus, good thing he‘d done reconnaissance in Vietnam. As time passed, I imagined him holding up the East Coast as I worked on the West. Puzzled a little at no responses to my letters. Certain we‘d meet again. I found out twenty years later that two years after our lovemaking he died, parachuting into Central America. His obituary said he returned to his duties that day until abdominal pain sent him to the infirmary. I called his clinic. His friend told me he had been on his feet, laughing with the younger, injured men. He had to be airlifted out and died on the way to Texas. I wonder what his last thoughts were. I like to think he held glimpses of me, maybe not that day, but a day before, encircling his legs, touching every part of his strong body, telling him, I’ll never forget.
Donna Emerson, college instructor, LCSW, photographer, writes poetry and prose. Recent poetry publications include Eclipse, Phoebe, Paterson Literary Review. Prose and photography publications: L. A. Review, Passager, Stone Canoe. Her chapbooks: This Water, and Body Rhymes (nominated for a California Book Award). Donna lives with her husband and daughter in Petaluma, near her adult sons.
WRITERS FORUM of PETALUMA Third Thursday of the month 7—9 p.m. Petaluma Community Center (320 N. McDowell Blvd.) $15 each workshop at the door
www.thewritespot.us February 17, 2011: Zoe Fitzgerald Carter March 17, 2011: Verna Dreisbach April 15, 2011: Matt Stewart May 19, 2011: Sheldon Siegal June 16, 2011: Victoria Zachheim
