Sinister: as for me, i wish that i was anywhere, with anyone, making out.

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

i saw him for the first time in six months on valentine's day, of all days.

i decided that day to walk myself and my miniskirt right on out of poetry 
class at the break. i tightened my scarf around my throat, and snapped up my 
red jacket. i had to have a bit of v-day glory, i thought, to balance out 
the all-black attire i had chosen for the godforsaken day.

i left the building, walked into the february air that for some reason feels 
more like late march. early spring. when things are supposed to breathe and 
lift up and out of their hiding places. but i know it's still winter and 
still february because everything is shrouded.

i decided i'd finally break down and buy my first pack of fags. nobody likes 
a bummer, really, and i can only charm so many cigarettes out of people with 
my flashing eyes and teeth. i don't know why i smoke them, really. maybe 
it's to look cool, to be a part of the scene. i have written that i like the 
dizzy feeling they leave me with, like i have just kissed a forbidden boy, 
and my chest is tight and heaving with restraint. but the boys taste better.

i started the walk from campus to downtown, the first time i had ever 
ditched in the middle of a class to walk somewhere. i suppose somehow since 
the diagnosis i feared my feet wouldn't work for long enough to carry me 
that far; they did. i called paul to tell him why i had been crying eariler 
that day when i ran into him coming out of the union. the tears were still 
stinging, and he told me i was too worried, too silly. and too good, 
besides.

and i walked in circles along the sidewalks, streets of cobblestone of which 
downtowns in nebraska are so fond. i walked past the photography shop where 
i bought black and white film for my photo class, past the coffee shop where 
mandee and i defiled a bathroom (well, really mandee. but that's just 
because she's a delinquent like that.) and i retrudged half the path i 
walked with the boy about a month ago. actually, exactly a month ago 
tomorrow.

and then. about a block away from the cigarette shop. i saw him. trying to 
get my attention, waving his hand and grinning like we had just parted ways 
that morning for class. i told paul goodbye, and closed my mobile, and cried 
as i ran to him, saying that on that day, of all days, i should see him.

he always gave me good, long hugs. and he did then. he asked me how i was, 
and we attempted, feebly, to catch each other up on lives led apart and away 
and together. we sought each other, then, for the people we knew, but i 
think we came up with new people. haunted people. i told him i had been 
asking about him. but had heard nothing.

he told me he didn't do drugs anymore. and i cried again.

he walked with me, told me what he was doing, that he was happy. i told him 
about this summer, about my confusion with the way things are. he told me he 
had dropped out of college, was working and reading and in love with a girl.

i told him i was jealous of him.

and then he told me he was getting married, and for a moment or two, there 
on the street, i wondered why he wasn't marrying me.

next month, he said, and the two of them are going to the justice of the 
peace. he walked to the cigarette shop with me, and directed me to the 
french kind he always used to smoke when he went out with me. for a long 
time, i looked only at his mouth, and thought how his life was so governed 
by it, and how, for a while, it had governed my life, too.

we walked to his car, a new one, and knew then that we were parting again. i 
didn't want it to really be the last time, and maybe it won't be. but it was 
the end, then, of something, and he held me for too long and not long 
enough, just like he always did. he apologized for ever being a burden to 
me.

and i told him he never was. that i loved him. that i still love him.

and he said he loved me. and that i was amazing. and then.

he was gone.

i took the damn pink lenses away from my eyes, so they wouldn't get streaked 
with mascara. i didn't know when i would stop crying, then. i walked back to 
the paper without my glasses, and for the first time in a few weeks, i 
really saw.

i used to always say to marc that i believed in the cliche. it is better to 
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. in the last few weeks, 
i said damn the cliche, because it isn't true. love is overrated, right? and 
who needs it. not me. so there. it is better to have always been alone, to 
never know what it is to love, especially when the love will some day be 
taken away.

i didn't think i could really live with a heart so broken.

but then. i saw him. and i knew this valentine's day that i really had loved 
marc the way he wanted me to all along. we both knew it thursday, and i was 
glad of it.

i remember last year he told me if he had money, i would have had flowers 
and candy and all manner of crap valentine's day items. but because he was 
poor, all he could give me was that he thought of me always, and i was never 
alone.

and i told him that was enough.

and it was. and it still is.

and even if i never have love for long, or miss it when i do have it, it is 
better, after all, to have had it at all, even in its smallest measure.

message to bron: love, my suggestion for you is to ditch class and take your 
worldly backpack for a walk through the nearest downtown area. not a remedy 
for living life the way you are supposed to, but certainly a temporary 
band-aid for the wounds of the real fucking world.

someday, we'll wish we did have someone around to tell us how everything 
works, because figuring it out for ourselves just hurts too much.

love, lindseylou



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