Who was your first lover? Was he young and corn-fed but sly behind the eyes? Was he frankly older and dissipated? Did he want to trade his years for yours?
Maybe he was someone where they'd drag you out and kill you if they knew—you, or him. Or *her.* Strange fruit waiting for the tree. Did you feel the skull behind the skin?
Was it stupid? Did you do it just to get it done? Did you *wish* you had that clear a reason? Did you even want to? Or did you just tell yourself you did because everyone else seemed to. You didn't have the nerve to say no. And maybe, given the circumstances, that was for the best.
Or was it long-coming, with a friend. Did you breach each other in a bed of years. The years of your friendship. The years you'd waited and secretly known what would come (and how, but just not when). Was there laughter. A slight pang, knowing that there would be no sudden strangers for you now. But a sweet one, because you've got what they can only dream of. You have to pick your dreams. The cost of this one is a cost you understand.
Or maybe that was actually the *end* of your journey together, your last act of love to each other, and now you were free to see what lay ahead of you.
Did you feel like you were ugly? Have you figured out yet how nuts that was? Are you going to figure out that how you feel about yourself now is still nuts?
Are you going to get your nails done? Do something about them finally? You've never been able to manage them. You don't understand how the others do it.
Shut the door out there and turn around. It's dark in here, isn't it. Do you like it or do you hate it? Do you know your way around?
Where does your crazy live? Have you bumped up against it in this blind place? Have you held its hand? Has it held yours? Do you get it from one particular side of your blood? One particular person?
#
I know how I got mine. From whom.
I barely speak to him these days. Even though I admire him. *Because* I admire him. Because I know what I owe him, both good and bad. I know what he gave me and I know what he took from me, with those words of his, and I thank him for both.
But I thank him by not speaking to him all that much these days.
It's going to be him and me at the end, though, after the ice is gone and the gates have come down. Just like it was at the beginning. I will put my head down, I will smile, I will invoke our years, and I will become his passenger again. And under his red wings I will survive. He will do this for me if I need him to. For me and my own passenger. He will do it even if he's dead. He'll find a way. He'll rise up in my blood. He'll take me over. His work will be complete. I will become him. I will become his terrible mother.
I already have. The other side of the clan would never talk this way. Their crazy is a whole different kind. I've got *his.*
I've got wings.
#
Who was your first? Did he see all this in you? Did he want to set it free?
