tigerlily

i want that option of calling "do over", like we're playing four square, or tetherball.

when i was 5 or 6, i had a friend that lived down the road. it's funny now...i don't even remember her name, or which of the girls in our several mile rural neighborhood she was. but she had this trick that she would use when we were playing, if i wouldn't do it her way. she would say, 'you do it how i want,or i'm going home'. if i didn't agree, she would march out of the house. and inevitably, i would go screaming and crying after her, pleading with her not to leave, and acquiescing to her demands. so confused, i talked with my mom about this, and she proposed that the next time this happened, i say, 'ok, go home, see you later.'

i thought my mom was nuts. but she urged me to give it a try.

so sure enough, a couple days later, i had my chance, and, holding my breath, i mustered up my courage and told my friend 'to get lost then'. she marched away, and i sat in my room, heartbroken.

but lo and behold, a few minutes later, she came back in with a weird, semi-sheepish look on her face and said, 'i changed my mind, we can play something else.' ...i just couldn't believe that it had worked. i was elated and empowered.

i wish i could tell this to love, to crappy circumstance, to dissapointment and disillusionment. 'ok then...i didn't want things my way anyway...you can just go ahead and leave...' and then maybe, strings of bad luck would be broken, and impish misfortune would walk out the door and reunion would walk back in. but it's not that much out of my control, and it's my own chosen story. or it was rather. i've switched my life's quill from the well of invisible ink to one jet black.


That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.

--from 'Sexing the Cherry' by Jeanette Winterson