Lise lies there asleep, great mystery.
The morning light and the world new again.
She says Anthony’s has gone
and my feeling is not the pure joy I’d imagined.
Perhaps I prepared too much to lose her
or share her.
Perhaps my heart has been hardened by these days
or my feelings made too naked.
When she told me I almost wished she hadn’t said it;
it was the one thing I wasn’t prepared for.
And when she told me, just after,
that she had broken her one promise to me
and had slept with him again,
what joy I had was soiled
with disappointment and anger.
So Anthony’s gone, perhaps,
though they will be friends in the future.
…she lies here now in the morning light,
under my heart and eyes
that have felt and seen too much these last days,
and I write these words to release
what I feel…
I feel love … laced with fear, of her.
I wonder how many cuts before the scars
and both of our hearts
have been through so much this week … so much.
We can’t go back and, if we go on,
it must be from here.
This morning, these feelings, these lies and promises,
these scars and these fears.
She’s hurt and disappointed me.
But, in truth, there’s not much she’s done
that I haven’t.
We are, neither of us, gentle people
in the world of men and women
so I cannot reproach her,
but, still, my fear and numbness
run so deep now.
The things we’ve about each other
under these stresses
have made us new to each other.
And here, in this newness,
in this morning’s light,
she will awaken and we will see
who we are.
I forgive these days, for they are done…
part of our history and shared experience
and I want to go forward … on.
For, if not, then what has all this been for?
But, I’m going to need time and gentleness
to sooth my fear’s whispering
and my heart’s retreat.
And so, I wait here for her to awaken.
For she has come through this too, to her own place,
to her own scars and new understandings
and she must see me, see us,
in new ways yet unknown to me.
She told me why she asked Anthony to go
and why he was willing…
It was moving too fast for her
and too slow for him.
If her love for me played some part
in all of that…she didn’t say.
And so I look at her in this morning’s light
and wait for her to awaken
with messages of our future.
(she awakens) life begins….
gallagher
24 Nov 85
– yesterday Lise went to Anthony and slept with him, breaking
a promise to me that she would sleep with neither of us until
she had decided. This afternoon he came here to her place and
she said she didn’t want to see him anymore other than as
friends.
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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