Pass me your gloves, this crime, it is never complete

I’m standing on the steps leading to your door, shifting my weight from one foot to the other and then back again. In the darkness of the night, I must look like the world’s most awkward thief, pained by indecision over whether to rob the place.

I’m smoking a cigarette. Not because of habit or craving, but because it is the only thing that can stop my pounding heart from bursting out of my chest right now. It’s a frozen night - exactly the temperature one would expect from February in Maine - and when I exhale I can’t tell if it’s smoke or condensation of my breath, and when my hands shake I can’t tell if it’s shivers or nerves.

Admittedly, I am cold, though it’s a secondary sensation to the flurry of emotional ones. My legs are the coldest, since I’ve traded my jeans for a red dress tonight. Over it I’m wearing my spruce-green tapered jacket, so I feel more than a little like a barren Christmas tree. Word association prompts my free hand to cover my belly as I contemplate its emptiness.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way. It’s been occupied before, like a nation under incursion. And on the day I drove the invader out, your hand held mine through the gory whirlwind. Victory, as it so often does, came at a price, and I paid for my liberation by lying face-up on a table and subjecting myself to a torturous procedure no doubt modeled to resemble an old medieval favorite - intestinal cranking.

My knight in a dusky band T-shirt, you sat beside me and kept me grounded through fits of fighting back tears and suppressing screams while my insides came out bit by bit. How many licks did it take? How many turns of the crank? Afterward, heating pad on my abdomen, blanket over my legs, we talked about the second season of Dexter. Oh, that poor Rudy.

I swallow and shake my head. Now all that remain are shreds of unreliable memory brought about by triggers at random. I'd been beset by the most recent reminiscent ambush while rummaging through a used book sale with Danielle and Gretchen, completely unsuspecting that the organizers hadn’t really been selling novels, but had in fact been peddling nostalgic talismans for the low, low price of 50¢ apiece.

There, among signs scribbled and taped to littered tables, somewhere between “BIOGRAPHIES” and “MYSTERY” I had stumbled across an AED masquerading as a beige paperback. I’d picked it up as my heart was hit with 200 joules, and clutched it as if it actually could save my life. “The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor.” Yeah, I know the feeling, Dan.

Not even in the workplace can safe harbor be found, as I, faced with the celebratory activity of creating a valentine, could not help but remember that pivotal time I’d participated in the love-holiday’s trademark craft. How could I forget walking the Union steps and finding myself at a table that had been strewn with colored paper, scissors, glitter, and markers? How could I fail to recall carefully fashioning and folding that big heart? With earnest if not eloquent writing, I’d addressed it to: My funny Valentine. Oh, just kidding. My dear starving artist. I get the feeling there was a flower, but now I’m truly testing the underwhelming limits of my memory.

My fingers trace the soft edges of this year’s version of last decade’s card as my blank stare lingers on the edge of your apartment. The light from your windows seems neither warm nor welcoming, but I’m drawn to it just the same. I imagine catching a glimpse of dark hair and glinting spectacles, and I can’t help chuckling at the thought of myself pressed against the window like a child peering into a toy shop, breath fogging the glass, eyes wide.

Instead, I remove the card from my pocket, tap it a few times on the banister, and mount the rest of the stairs. I hold it up, scrutinizing its construction. Try as I might to create beautiful things, to even call my craft skills fifth-grade level would be an insult to fifth-graders everywhere. I somehow grumble and sigh simultaneously, then bring the cigarette to my lips for a last drag.

As I exhale, I set the glowing cherry to the heart’s tip and let it smolder. Unsatisfied with the slow scorch, I flick the stub aside and fire up my lighter. This time the paper readily ignites, and I dangle it over the railing, fingertips pinching one corner, until nearly all of it has burned. I loosen my fingers and watch with a vague indifference as the wind breaks up the cinders and blows them away. Goosebumps overrun my skin, but in this weather it’s hard to tell if its stimulus is external or internal, and it’s hard to tell if the flying flakes are snow or ash.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Conceptual Trap signed on at 1:22:09 AM

Conceptual Trap (1:27:43 AM): I didn't get a valentine from you this year

Conceptual Trap (1:27:49 AM): that's kind of sad to me