Author's Commentary
I realize this piece COMPLETELY lacks context, so please ignore that while reading this.
It truly wasn't originally intended to be a piece of literature.
It was just a message - something that was jumping around my head while I was trying to sleep, and I wrote it out.
I felt the style was a bit different compared to most of my writing, but it wasn't intentional, that's just how the words came out. I see it as a bit more mature than what I'm used to, and a bit closer to the styles I've see in some of the non-Brautigan authors I admire. I posted it on a couple other writing sites, for just for the sake of putting it up, and I got a rather pleasant response. Thought I'd see what you guys think of it.
“I love you” – we say that often enough. I don’t know what you mean by it, if anything, and I’m not sure what I mean by it, either, though I know there’s something behind it. But I make you say it to me, because I like to hear it. I like to attach things to it – memories, emotions, comforts…
After my return from China, I remember the first time I saw you again. Though many things that occur in this recent part of my life are passing through my mind quickly and subtly, leaving hardly a footstep in the sand, I remember so vividly the small homecoming after the separation between our selves. Each moment is so well recorded, so colorfully illustrated, contrasting the black&white blur that seems to encompass the mass of so many trivial, forgettable and forgotten moments.
I recall, even, that day being both willing, and up early enough to walk to school that morning. Doing so, partially, because my internal clock was somewhere in a compromise between China’s and California’s time, but more importantly because I knew you’d be there, waiting for me. I could anticipate the embrace – almost able to feel it. And with that foresight, which is still so clear in hindsight, I lost view of the immediate present, and unwittingly left home an hour early – even that worthless detail doesn’t lose luster in the context.
A puffy jacket, a denim miniskirt, and white tennis shoes – you in them, running towards me. A picture in my head, to accompany the scattered others you’ve given me, intentionally and incidentally. Your legs stand out in that picture – highlighted and emphasized by my mind’s photoshop. Wonderful, full, lush AMERICAN legs, after ten consecutive days of the slim, lean and, though gorgeous, tiresome thighs and calves of Asian women. Those delightful legs – the type I had been truly craving for several days – stretching out from short, frayed denim, carrying and even more enjoyable creature towards me.
That action, the running, I remember tenderly. The excitement, enthusiasm, affection connoted by that hastened movement – and the childlike essence of it, coming from this near-adult girl; how women can affect me with youthful expression! The sprint, the display of emotion, was more than I had let myself hope for.
And then, the arms tightly around me. Again, wonderful, a rejuvenating grip you had around my body, my being that was aching so much for the comfort of such an embrace. That feeling, being so locked within our mutual grasp on each other, that we had to lean together to pick up the cell phone you dropped; I’ve only felt it a few times in my lifetime. And so it sticks, it holds its place in my mind.
“You’re alive!” Those words from your lips, the first I heard from them in almost two weeks. Tired and weathered from a short, foreign adventure, still stale from a twelve-hour plane flight, and back in the place where I had spent a great majority of my life getting tired of. But holding, tightly holding, one of the few things I was capable of missing in my travels. Yes, I was alive – more so than I had been in ages.
We had known each other several months then, and we’ve added only a few months since. But something big is near, standing at our doorsteps and knocking. An end to the five days a week, where somewhere amongst them, I know I’ll see you. There will be three months or so, to transition from the relatively-sheltered life of public education, into the increasingly real existence beyond adolescence’s expectations and limitations.
I don’t know how any of that will turn out. I don’t know what you’ll do with your life, and I’m struggling with even the greater details of mine. It’s frustrating, not knowing where I’ll go, or how I’ll live. But what troubles me more, is the fact that I’m not sure when the next time I’ll see you will be, past the ceremony.
It worries me, because you’re one of the few people I’ve let into my most intimate circle. In the major transition from minorhood to the greater reality, I do want to change many things, and let plenty of things go, but I’m letting myself hope that you’ll still stick around through it all. That, wherever you are, and wherever I am, you’ll remember me – and maybe call occasionally.
And beyond that, even, I hope you miss me. Not daily, of course – that, I know, is torture, to think of and want every day a person you can’t see. But every once in a while, remember me, and miss me, and let that build up over time. So one day, however far in the future, I can see you again;
and you can run to me, hold me tightly, and remind me that I’m alive.
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