I went back to the beginning, to the first poem I am certain was written about me or to me, a hopeful, perhaps too hopeful poem she posted a day or two after she started texting me in March 2012, telling me “I’m really into you.”
Since she later yanked down this poem from her blog when things grew tense between us, the poem must have said something important to her, and something she needed to take back, having – perhaps – exposed her inner sense and her motives too clearly.
I resurrect this poem at this time because it reveals some od her intentions at that time which I failed to grasp early on.
In some ways, this poem dispels some presumption that everything she did in regard to our office was calculating.
Or perhaps, gives evidence to the mixed motives and her inability to separate what she wanted professionally from what she needed personally.
Since she posted this so soon after we connected, I assume she did not expect for me to have read it immediately, and so, the question as to whether this poem is directly directed at me rather than just about me remains a question.
It certainly reads as if she intended for me to read it. Some lines are directly focused on med, or if not me, then the person she is talking about.
She opens the poem with the word “Finally,” repeated twice, and then in the third refrain, modified as “Final he”, and her she gives a tell-tale description.
“With that clandestine one-eyed four-dimensional stare.”
I wore an eye patch back then as I recovered from eye surgery.
Believing the poem is about me, I am also aware that she made assumptions about me and the poem hints at her being somewhat naive – I missed later during the depths of our conflicts.
She assumed that my “fourth-dimensional stare” could see A “into what it is we both need.”
This is the beginning and the end (the same thing, she says) “What it was and what it could be.”
And here, she lays out the caveat that could have/should have warned me about what was to come.
“Don’t fucking rescue me.”
The implication is that someone like me might think she needs to be rescued, and that she has been through all this before, and is aware of exactly who she is and what she does. She goes on to assume that I will not pass judgement on her (as saving would imply.)
“But you won’t, I know,” she wrote.
At this point, her poem goes on to lay out a fundamental truth – and express an everlasting hope for the emerging relationship – including more than a suggested sexual relationship.
although I have a vision to see behind her mask, this still may not be the real her, but rather something I want for myself, which I – like some before me – assume as her real self. This implies the potential for something like love which may be seen as real, rather than merely lust.
She suggests that I should take as real what I see when I looking behind her “seething mask” and into her
“As in me,” she writes with strong sexual allusion, “or in me – thrust through a life time diatribe of convincing man after woman after man” that she is tough enough to take what I thrust at her, as what is not really here, but a projection of my own desire, want I want her to be.
This implies that we (man after woman after man etc.) see only what we wish her to be, and can’t see the real her (like a song from The Who’s rock opera – “can you see the real me, can ya?”
What these layers of meaning suggest is that I might never get to know the real her, or even what lies behind the seething mask, and like her lovers before this, I will see what I want to see rather than what is actually there, no matter how deeply I thrust into her.
The poem – not by her intention – suggests perceived vulnerability, of a damsel in distress men and some women paint her as, when she has tried her whole life to convince her lovers “I am tough enough to take what you thrust at me (who is not her, but a projection of our own desires for what we wish her to be, while perhaps mistakenly accepting what we finally see when we look passed the mask as real.
“However obscure and imprecise that might be,” she writes.
At this point in the poem, she draws back a little, taking a more positive outlook to admit that whatever happens between us is “nice, perhaps beyond belief.”
She said it was nice to rest in peace without having to die, endlessly.
Or to be reinvented based on what other people think they know about her, but don’t.
She speculates about the future – “Whatever that may be,” and said she is grateful and “semi-impatient” to see what is meant for me and her.
The poem attempts to foreshadow what she hopes will happen and sets the stage for extreme disappointment as I fail to live up to her best expectation, and far exceed her worst fears.
I was not prepared to fully appreciate the poem when she first posted it. So, I could not take heed to avoid the pitfalls implied in it, and only now, a year or so later, after having incurred her wrath and caused her great pad, do I realize how revealing the poem is, as much a confession as her poem about fair and unfair.
Yet, even now, after having read her poems, digested many, I still may lack the vision to see beyond her masks and may still see in her what I want or need her to be – something utterly sad, since I only now clearly realize what got lost, and how I managed to blow something very special.
2012 menu
email to Al Sullivan
