Tag Archives: romance

147. In the Final Frame

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My dream on the night after Valentine’s Day was scored to the horror genre. The soundtrack was very spooky. I knew it was not smart to step into the woods, flanked by those giant haunting cedars, but I did, and all the while I was thinking, “Wasn’t it supposed to be a comedy—a romantic, goofy, off-beat affair? Wasn’t I supposed to, in the end, after many trials and frustrating close-calls, get the girl? Wasn’t I supposed to meet up with her in an arboretum on the first day of spring and, with the new blossoms falling ever so softly down upon us, embrace her at last, and kiss, as the camera circled us on a dolly?” 

The problem was not the woods, and the bloody mess I made there, but where those woods led, to the foreshadow, years earlier, when unloading our stuff into my apartment. The kid from upstairs said sorry that he couldn’t help but he had a bad back. He drank beer on the covered landing above and watched me move in all afternoon as the rain came down as a hard noun. How could I possibly modify that? And yet it wasn’t so bad, that first time, moving out, doing what I thought I had to do, for us. What got me—what gets me even now—is how there is likely no arboretum.

There is no camera circling us on a dolly.

We found ourselves last night, in fact, in the final frame, dividing up the body. Had we really come to this? Fine. These feet are for you. I leave my feet for you, with love. They know the way—only forward forever always. But my eyes I will keep, so as not to tempt you (or me): There is nothing back there to look upon— those woods, that marriage, the blossoms.

Even so, let’s be honest: thrilling it was at times, yes, but rarely ever horrifying. It was a drama, mainly, and on another day in the future much like this one, of breaking blossoms, we may also smile when thinking of us and what was most certainly our comedy—our somewhat formulaic but fundamentally feel-good romance and comedy. Darling, you will see. Trust me, I promise.

116. Let’s Like Each Other

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He called out to her one last time. He called out to her one last time as if bailing a boat while drowning faster than he could bail. He was drowning faster, in fact, than he could write the word drowning. But who was this mysterious “her” to not reciprocate when he was obviously trying to make a connection?

He started his correspondence with “Hiya”—not the best salutation for making good first impressions, retrospectively, but nevertheless, why does she not respond? Is he really that invisible? Is he no better than SPAM to her?

On top of it, or to start it off, why did she not accept his friend request on Facebook? Why did she not accept his invitation request for LinkedIn? He Yelped for her. He Yelped for her like a seal slowly choking on his own 3-star excrement. And yet nothing. How is that possible?

He liked her. She should like him. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. You get it? Quid pro quo. That’s how it works. How could she not appreciate that? How could she not recognize and appreciate, most importantly, the impressiveness (some have suggested “domination”) of his online presence?

Is she possibly that technologically inept? And if so, it makes him wonder why he should be caring about her in the first place. If she does not know the basics about hashtags, for one small instance, and how to re-tweet when he tweets to her, how good really, again, is she to him?