Love is Blue by Rebekah Skochinski
Photo by Steve Johnson for Pexels
You remember the day you first saw him. He bounced from his heels when he walked. Happy-go-lucky. You hoped he would find you funny and smart and pretty. You imagined the ways he would describe your beauty. Fresh. Unfettered. All of this attention would light your heart on fire. Your heart would burn hot, shooting rainbow arcing sparks in every direction. And once this fire burned down to glowing coals, if you needed a reminder of what it was like to be loved, you could slice open your chest and blow.
Before you met the poet, you let yourself daydream about what it would be like when you fell in love. An explosion. A sky full of stars. A spontaneous thunderstorm. In reality, it was far less dramatic. The earth did not shatter (that would come later). Poets love love, do they not? They love describing, deconstructing, cornering, hi-jacking, naming, owning. And you, of course they will love you because you represent the potential of love.
You will be wearing a gorgeous navy dress with orange flowers that you bought from a shop in Brooklyn. The owner was an older woman with a thick accent from where you do not know who wore bright fuchsia lipstick, white hair slicked back into a low bun like a ballerina. A bronze cobra head with ruby eyes pinned near her heart. She insisted you buy the dress. Too immodest you said, hesitating. Darling, it is perfect, she said with a cocked eyebrow. You bought it. Hid it. Tag still on. But you would take it out now and again. Twirl in front of the cracked mirror on the inside of the hall closet. It showed your cleavage in a modest but flattering way. You raised on your toes to mimic heels. Love would be the perfect occasion for the dress. Love is a whisper that becomes a shout.
This is how it happens
At first the poet will read the words of others to you. When you have a picnic in the park, he pulls out a red and white checked blanket from the basket along with a baguette from the bakery on 42nd. While he speaks, he spits crumbs onto your dress. They look like fallen buttons. You sip a crisp Pinot Grigio from a stemless wine glass that refuses to nestle in the spongy grass so you hold it in your hand. It warms quickly. You don’t want to drink it this way but you do. With your free hand you break off pieces of cheese, and suck on olives, chewing around the pits that are so salty they sting your tongue. He reads. His hair flopped forward onto his nose. You want to brush it back from his face.
You remember how handsome he was back then. What you thought of him the day you first spoke in the library—he was serious, his eyes were soft and kind. His hands, gentle. They were not working hands. Callous-free. Nails filed perfectly round with an equal amount of white nail and half-moons. You only had half-moons on your thumbs. You didn’t notice until he told you, one day, kissing your fingertips and you thought, how observant, my man poet is. This was your pet name for him that you never said to his face.
He never wore jeans. Only cords that bagged out at the knees; the grooves softened ripples. And sneakers. The kind that skateboarders wear but he was horribly unathletic. In fact, he abhorred sport and the pursuit of it. Said anyone who played was unevolved. Violence masked as honour, he said. You scratched your finger against his leg creating a “zippy melody” because of the sound. He laughed in a way that you later recognized was only politeness. Women are not funny, especially not you.
And yet you loved him. You got used to sidestepping his anger; his moods that would linger over your apartment like a dry pot smoking on the stove. The bitter smell stayed in your clothes for days. Then, just as suddenly as the anger or darkness came on, it dissipated. He would bounce out of bed and say he was going to the park to feed the geese, or he’d flick the light on the nightstand, nearly toppling it as he fumbled for his pen, breathlessly telling you how inspiration had come to him in a dream. You tried to imagine what this inspiration looked like. Did it have a shape? Was it a voice? Did he hear music?
Eventually, you gave up trying to picture what this inspiration was about because you were afraid it was never going to come to you. You were relieved that the mood passed and that inspiration was striking. Strike, thou mysterious phantom, strike. You thanked the lord above even though you did not believe in a lord above. You had to thank someone. Something. There had to be more than just the two of you.
When he loved life again, so did you. And you worked extra hard to make sure that everything would be easy for him so he would not slide into despair or a funk or whatever it was. This was love, you thought, as you cooked his favourite meal: penne with cream sauce, pancetta and peas.
This was also love, you told yourself, slicing a hot iron across his shirts. He insisted on linen. Linen was supposed to look rumpled, you thought, but you thought wrong.
And you waited. You waited for him to finish his book. You waited for him to sell his book. You waited for him to be happy. You waited for you to love him more. Because only then would you be able to think about yourself and what you wanted. Only then.
What you had been waiting for
Eventually, he wrote about you. Yes! No. The timing was wrong. Not like this. Not after you had collapsed into bed after a long hot day of nothing. Your fingertips still smelling like bleach from scrubbing the toilet. Don’t be ungrateful, you fool, you told your weary body, the strained muscles in your neck. Turn to him. Smile. This is what you had been waiting for. To be immortalized in verse.
Listen to this, my love, he said, his finger holding a place in his notebook. You closed your eyes. Wished that you had a recorder to capture this moment so that you could play it back when you needed it most. When it would be right. There would be snow softly falling. You would be skating in Rockefeller Center with the glittering lights and your cheeks rosy from the wind. Mittened hands. Scarves looped around your necks, a layer of frost from your hot breath on them in lacy whiteness.
Or fall. Yes, the autumnal equinox. When the air is crisp and delightful. The trees dipped in orange, red, and yellow. Standing close. Perhaps his coat hugging your shoulders like a cape. Beneath it, the dress. The setting sun alighting on your hair. Lips tinted red from wine. A magic moment. That’s how you wanted it to be. Not like this.
You have forgotten most of the words now. You willed yourself to forget. You recall there was a line about how your eyes were like pirouetting planets and your limbs cascading like a waterfall. Dreadful. You were embarrassed for him and for yourself. Please. Please don’t ask. But he asked: what do you think? You had to lie. Lie through your teeth. Lie from your heart. Lie so deep it hurt your lungs.
He still called you “love” then. And other names that were not your name. As though he couldn’t decide who it was that he wanted to love. One month it was Calliope because “four syllable names are so rare these days”. There was also Winnifred so he could shorten it to Win. It was hard to keep track of his preferences. You did try so very hard.
What comes next
Never agree to have the poet’s baby. No matter how many times he pleads and promises. His hand on his penis, pretending he will pull out. No matter, later, when you are sharing a bottle of Barolo in your favourite table in the corner of that Italian restaurant with starched white tablecloths, opera flooding the loudspeaker, waiters with moustaches and broken English. This is where he will try to convince you about how beautiful the boy will be. When you are half-drunk.
Your eyes narrowed like a cat. Senses split. It’s always a boy, never a girl. Oh, a girl would be okay, he pontificates, with a flourish of his wrist. You used to love that shirt. Paisley. With a mandarin collar. But our boy will have your almond shaped eyes, he says. We can show him the world, move to Paris with him. Our petit prince. You fear he will want to name him something French like Claude. You are not far off: Jacques.
It was during the pregnancy Paris fantasy phase that the poet grew a moustache. At first it stayed near the perimeters of his mouth in an even line. Then it got bushier and slithered over his top lip. He used it to tickle your face. He tried several times to grow a beard, rubbing it against your cheeks until they were red. I wonder if people will think that I am hiding something, he said, stroking the hair.
“That, or you have a weak chin,” you said and as soon as you did, your hand went to your mouth. His eyes narrowed. For someone without a head for numbers, he was very good at keeping score.
This is how it ends
And then a fickle day came. It was either going to be sunny with a bit of cloud. Partly cloudy. Rain all day. Rain developing in the afternoon. A chance of a thunderstorm. You pretended to be asleep with your head turned facing the window. The cedar and fir of the candle you’d burned the night before filling your nose. He hated it. Smells like mould, he said. He did not know what mould smelled like. He did not clean the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush or scrub the pink scum out of the shower curtain.
You waited for him to holler at you from the hallway. You no longer ran to kiss him on the nose. He no longer asked you to. You knew what he looked like: hand on the door, satchel slung over his shoulder. Insert one of the following:
I’m off to a café to write!
Inspiration calls, darling!
Wish me well with words!
You waited for the slam of the door. You waited for quiet. Eventually, you padded to the kitchen for coffee. Hoping he’d left you some. He didn’t always. I’m so sorry my minstrel, I must have been swept away. You know how it is.
What he did leave was a note. Your name swirled on the envelope: Anna. With a large dramatic A. All uppercase. On the fancy stationery. You tore at it with trembling fingers. It was a single page. He had a forceful way of writing. It left marks on tables. You stopped reading after the first line: “Darling, there is no easy way to say this”. Instead of poring over the poet’s words, instead of allowing his voice to rattle around in your head, you grabbed a match and burned it in the kitchen sink. Watched the black-edged pieces flutter into the curtain. Dropped it when the flame got close to your fingers. Stood over the smoke until it cluttered your throat and eyes.
You had questions. Of course, you had questions. Should you have seen this coming? Had he been more distant lately? Was he having an affair? What had been the last straw? Why did you let him leave you and you not leave him? But also, you were feeling something unfamiliar. Something new. Something like anger. How could you have let yourself be betrayed by a man that you did not love? A mean and talentless man who had become nothing more than a warm body beside you—a breathing shadow.
The poetic injustice is that he hasn’t left only you. He has left you and a baby. The baby you finally agreed to and now he couldn’t be bothered to even see it born. Why now when he has everything he said he wanted? Not the book yet, no. But everything else. Stand by your man. You did this. You did this so very well.
Now you are a dandelion that has lost its head. When you had hoped you would be at the centre of it all. Elevated. A queen. Yet all this time you have been nothing. Not in his eyes and not in your own. This poet who you thought you loved was Just. A. Man.
You go back to the bedroom. Find his notebooks. Burn them. The sink is a smouldering pile of ashes and contempt. You yell at it. You yell until your voice is ragged, your throat is raw, and your ears are plugged. You yell until you remember the baby that is growing between your hips and your heart.
You stop. Put a hand there.
Then you dig into the closet of your bedroom. Clawing at his shirts. Throwing them to the floor. Stamping on them with your bare feet. At the back, you find the dress. It is so soft in your hands. And lovely. It still smells faintly of that shopkeeper’s strong perfume: roses and freshly cut grass. You remember it being a darker shade of blue than it is, like the sky just before midnight. But it is lighter than that. More like a peacock blue. The flowers fainter than real life flowers. It probably no longer fits you. It may never fit you again. You could donate it to good will. It is too beautiful for that. With one swift move, you grab hold of the tag and rip it from the seam. It is yours now to keep.
Rebekah Skochinski (she/her) is a writer from Canada. Her fiction has been shortlisted for several contests, including The Writers' Union of Canada's Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. She’s been published in various literary magazines and is currently at work on her first novel.