Orphan

The weight of my laptop and duffel has left bruises across my right shoulder, as it often does. The marks look like hickeys, but they are the opposite of hickeys - are the result of pressure rather than suction. Are a sign not of coming together, but of moving apart. Are a sign of carrying weight alone, too much weight, not much weight at all when held in my hands. The bags do not cut into my hands, which are covered in the same skin as my shoulder. They do not cut into other people's shoulders, or other people's backs. They do not leave a trail of burst figs on any skin but mine, in any place but the slope between neck and arm.

Ciro and Patrick took me to the airport this morning, and waited with me until my flight boarded. I worry that I ignored Patrick - was perhaps rude to Patrick - although I was glad to have him along. I worry that I have ignored a number of people, have neglected friendly social duties because there wasn't time, wasn't nearly enough time to say goodbye to Ciro when we are still so busy saying hello. I understand this requirement of separation - understand it in a deep, less than rational way; although I know the stated reasons -

and they are good reasons -

I also know that they are not the reasons, that the reasons are not important - that the requirement simply is. This is magical thinking; this is dream logic. This is a choice made when exhausted, a choice that seems like no choice: you must keep painting, although you cannot make a straight line. You must hold on to the melting metal, even as beads of it fall onto your foot. You must slide through the polyurethane; you do not know why; it is necessary.

I think it is not this way for him. I hope it is not. For me, it is bewildering, a thing you accept as a child and assume will make sense as you age. At some point, it will click, and I will say "ah. This is why it is important." This is why you raise your hand before you talk. This is why they take a collection. This is why you begin Dear and end Sincerely.

Hearing the reasons - saying the reasons - has not helped.

Throughout the announcements of my liason with Ciro, the common reaction was "it will be hard on him, your leaving." Never "it will be hard on you, hard to go to a place with no links to him, a place with no friends to distract you, no friends who remember him." I assume these people, these friends and relations, mean it as a compliment - you, Romie, are a very great prize, so clearly important to him - vital - and bound for such great things in such exciting places.

Perhaps it will be easier when I arrive, when I am not on this day's stop-over in Boston. Or perhaps it will be the same, sitting alone with a computer screen, pathetically hoping for something of him - the merest scrap of a sentence - alone and hating us both for our loneliness.