When A Man Wants A Woman

Her name is 'Evinn'.  I knew she would be beautiful before I knew she was half-Italian.  I knew I was obsessed before I named her eyes jaded pearls in my diary.  I wasn't all about her height, her long legs, or her affinity for snow boots.  I saw past the rippling ocean of maple hair.  I saw something I couldn't understand - a book closed to me, my empathy not received.  I always got it wrong, especially at first, when it was wrong to even look at what I'd seen.

I knew her when she was a skinny little thing dancing in flowered sundresses and flip flops.  I'd peak over the week's sci-fi at shoulder slips.  She liked to lay sideways on anything, the couch, the chaise lounge, on the kitchen table, always away from me - so all I had were patterns, skips of skin, and choppy curves under those bright gowns.  I wouldn't finish a page without running her horizon back and forth.  If her feet found each other, wrapped around with feline fecundity, I wouldn't finish a word.  I would freeze until a stressed finger flapped a page back and forth like I was studying something important.  She never looked back, though.  Not once.

She saw me when I was proud.  She saw the best of me with my family.  She was spending more time with us, with me, through my sister.  She lived nearby.  The girls shared cars and crushes.  Meanwhile, I learned to cook.  Every weekend I attended a private academy taught by quirky tele-chefs.  For Saturday's brunch, a consortium of spicy fruits, hidden eggs, and chilled lightly-flavored waters and smoothies for the newly drunk and drowned.  Sunday breakfasts were my time to shine: French Toast with Bananas Foster, Crepe Suzette and asparagus salad with roasted sweet peppers and broiled cherry tomatoes, omelets to order, and bowls of yogurt and fresh fruit for the girls to snack on while they napped and committed to their weekly homework ritual (waiting for primetime sitcoms). 

I knew her when she was sad - when things weren't going her way.  I watched wrinkles harass her eyes.  No amount of foundation could hide her weariness from me.  She smiled less and less every day.  I was around more, then.  I caught so many bad nights, her desperation became palpable, a quicksand aura.  If I made a move to save her, I'd be hers, I thought.  I wasn't enough, yet.  I needed more time.  I floated in earshot - a faerie to her every request.  I couldn't refuse anything, but I wasn't stupid enough to tell her that outright.  I existed for months waiting to be used.  I felt like an animal who missed his cage, though I'd never been inside.

She saw me when I was down.  When life had claimed years from me, she was witness to my weakness.  I got hurt.  Simple as that, my strength was gone.  I couldn't hold my family.  I couldn't lift myself.  I couldn't sleep.  I wouldn't eat what I should; train like I should; plan like I needed to.  She let me call her 'Evy'.  That's all she ever gave.  Surgery saved me and I left.  Again.

Now, stuck in Hell's country, I watch my stomach oscillate with the days.  Most nights are spent in sweat at the gym and I see the confidence in new tones.  Sometimes I think about her through a movie; through a smoothie, a cookie, and a second dinner.  Then I rise to shower with a shirt on.  I don't call home on those days.

"This is it."  I think, "She's worth the shot."  I say, "It doesn't matter who she's with now."  I storm, "I'll take her."

There's no one else.  The more I think about it, there doesn't need to be.  I've been by myself for all this time.  I can do it until the day I die.  I can still mean something, alone.

She's waiting for me.  At least, I hope she is.


Word Count:  670