jack be nimble

- smaur -

When you first kissed me, we were strangers in a subway station. The world took form beneath the shape of your lips, your slender fingers curled in the tangles of my hair. The axis upon which I guided my existence disintegrated. All around us flowed an unending tide of people and their problems, small and stinking of humanity, and I was wrapped in the soft clean smell of you.

You broke the kiss and whispered, "I want to know you."

I want to know you. There were no sexual undertones, no double-entendres or fabricated truths or clever words. You meant it, didn't you? I want to know you.

We began at the beginning. Tall glasses of chocolate milk sipped beneath the trees; exchanging life stories, tracing the paths of our pasts on the narrow tributaries of our veins. This little one's the mother you never knew, that one's the father I wish I hadn't. We walked through the deep dark secrets of our yesteryears and emerged holding hands. Sorrow for sorrow, until the sunlight washed away the shadows and we were cleansed. Your gold-limned fingers touched mine in gentle reassurance; I imagined you were an angel. Black-eyed and dark-haired, haloed in the butter-yellow of noon, you smiled at my clumsy words and nervous hand gestures. And I, I stared at the hollows of your wrists, smudged in grey shadow, and knew I could never hate you.

I want to know you.

Two years of moonlit dancing and cold noodles for breakfast. We made friends, in this vast lonely city where dreams are fragile and relationships doubly so. You made friends: Lee with his wind-swept landscapes, Mary and her violin, quiet John and quiet John's booming laugh. I hung back, too shy, too nervous, but you pulled me in. "This is my fiancée," you said.

"But, Jack." My voice was taut and thin. But, Jack — how I hated myself. You knew Latin and French and Spanish, and all I knew was the plaintive plea of my insubstantial words. You glanced at me quickly, worriedly. And then, before these strangers, you proposed to me. Snapped open a tiny satin box with a promise and a kiss sitting on a slim band of gold. John laughed and Mary swore loudly and you kissed me. Your fingers in my hair and your lips molding the shape of mine. That was our world, my world.

Of course I said yes. How could I not? We married in a small village in Italy, against lush green slopes blooming with scarlet poppies. You picked a bunch and knotted them into a crown for my hair. On the morning after, while you still slept, I pressed them into a scrapbook and hid them away. It was my collection of you, the bits I would gather and pilfer for the next five years.

"Where's my handkerchief?" you'd ask, turning the room upside down in search of it.

"I don't know," I would answer, clutching it tightly in my pocket. When you had left for work, I ironed it carefully, burying your lingering scent into my nostrils, and stowed it into my book.

"I lost my keys." You would laugh wryly and kiss my hair. "God, I'm so out of the loop."

I said nothing. Each key was framed on a page of its own, bordered by an inch of tiny coloured poppies.

You were the axis upon which my world tilted. Every hour you were gone I hungered for your return, flipping through the pages of my leather-bound book of you, breathing in the signs of your existence. Twisting the ring on my finger, a promise and a kiss (your promise and your kiss) bound to it. Wiling away those empty moments till you came back. And when you did, my world was set to order. Those mornings and nights and weekends seemed surreal after aching hours of waiting. Moments snatched out of time, out of your time — if only I could've taken them, ironed them out. Glued them into my scrapbook.

The world is made up of people like me. If only and but, Jack and I don't know. Plaintive and quiet and non-existential, shadowy half-sketched figures moving across the globe. But you, you were different. A drop of self-contained sunlight, a microcosm of heaven. An angel, a god. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Clever and articulate and intelligent, you were everything against my nothing. Whatever did you find in me? I didn't know and I stopped caring. You loved me, you wanted me. You told me every day, every night. You told me at the beginning, do you remember?

I want to know you.

You restructured my existence. No, you were my existence. The moments we were apart, I felt myself curling up into my empty shell. The moments we were apart, I felt the fragility of my universe crumbling. You ate breakfast and I watched you with despairing eyes; you kissed me absently, still half-asleep, and I ached to know you were leaving. I died a little more every moment you were gone, until I couldn't help it. Snatched up the spare keys and drove to the massive grey structure of your office building.

I followed you to work every day. Love is love. Till death do us part, we had promised, and the promise lay on my finger, glimmering against the gold band. You never saw me, of course. That was my one and only gift, my one and only curse. An existence of non-existence, an insubstantial life of shadows. I watched you make friends in the officeplace, invite Ted and his wife Mary to come bowling with us. While I pined in the darkness, you lived in the sunlight. You made the sunlight, don't you see? I was a tiny plant cradled in your cultured hands, drinking in light against the lapping waters of your Latin and Spanish and je t'aime. I watched you eat lunch at the tiny bistro across the street, crumple the napkins in the trash. (I took them, of course; ironed them and stitched them into my book.) I watched you for weeks, for months, as you joked and laughed with your co-workers, as you tossed spare change to the tattered beggar on the streets. As you helped an old woman cross the street, held doors open, carried groceries.

I watched as you got into Mary's car and drove to the hotel and made love on silk sheets.

Made love. Oh god. Why do they say that? Why do we say that? As if in that single act you can erase seven years of promises and kisses and secrets and sunlight, transfer it to another woman. As if the very structure of my world can crumble in a single moment; cities falling, mountains tumbling, lakes evaporating. Je t'aime. Je t'adore. As if none of that means anything; as if words are just words, and yours are as insubstantial as mine.

"I want to know you," you whispered into the curve of her neck.

Once you said it to me. Once you kissed me on a subway station in the middle of strangers. As strangers. Once you proposed to me and married me and plaited a crown of poppies for my hair.

Once you loved me.

Mary. Ted's wife the violinist, who swore loudly when you showed me the ring. I wonder how long you've known her, how long you've loved her? (But no, no, you loved me. You said you did. You gave me the ring. It was a kiss and a promise and I believed you. We married in Tuscany. You love me.) I wonder if you've gone anywhere together. If those business trips were a lie, if they were as fabricated as your synthetic sunlight.

I wonder how long it took for you to die. You were so surprised, scrambling naked out of the bed. All over again you were an unknown element, a stranger in a strange place.

It still hurt. I watched as your fingers scrabbled desperately over the tight knot of silk that looped her neck. You didn't even notice, did you? Till the wineglass smashed and you turned your head and —

And —

It only took moments. The jagged slip of glass impaled your heart, twisted against the pale planes of your chest. "I guess that makes two of us," I said softly to you. My fallen god, my angel, my sunlight; you were the axis upon which my existence was spun. Picking daisies in the sunshine (he loves me, he loves me not), sipping wine on Tuscan slopes, watching dusty pink skies with your fingers in my hair. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. I loved you.

I want to know you, I whisper into your dark hair, haloed in sun-gold. Someone's hammering at the door. I wish I had my scrapbook, to keep you close by. I wish I could frame you on the last page, eyes closed (for I close them now with my hands), breathe in the soft clean scent of you forevermore.

There's a commotion at the door, the sound of wood splintering. I don't care. You're gone, after all, a glinting shard of glass protruding from your chest. They're entering the room – someone's shouting – they must have seen her body tangled in the sheets.

You're all I see now. Leaning down, I press my lips against yours.

The last time I kiss you, we're strangers again.