This Time...

          Here’s what pirates do. They steal young women and take them out on the high seas, and I am not so young any more but I feel young in his arms and I melt, I say yes to anything, anything. I forget I am one who can walk a hundred miles, run thirteen miles, waltz and twirl, shoot pictures that make people cry, earn my keep with what fits in the back of my car. I forget, I forget who it is that says Yes, and I follow.

            I met him dancing. He led, I followed. And after that afternoon on the Coleman sleeping bag I’d follow him anywhere. He followed me home from a wedding one day, followed me down the highway as my whole body sang He, he is back there, He, he is coming home with you.

            He did raise a flag, small yellow flag, the kind that says, Busy, too busy. Not Looking For Committed Relationship. So I raised one saying, Four Other Guys, Don’t Worry. And we each flew another flag below the ones we showed, one a skull and crossbones, the other white and blank.

            The black one read Look, I am good. I am everything you think you want. I’ll be sweet and humble, respectful and generous and kind. I’ll stay and stay and I’ll keep coming back, let you think you’re safe with me. You’ll think you are safe and you’ll lay down your arms and you’ll lay down your body with me. Then I will get up, I’ll get back in my car, and one day I‘ll tell you Her name. Once I know I can have you I’ll say that I love her, and I’m sad but it just isn’t you.

            The white one read Please. I only look strong. Please stay and hold me and keep me safe, tell me I’m safe with you.

            By then he was in my kitchen and it was already too late, so we saluted the false flags and went on. We made love on the quilt, in my bed, in my dreams. And when he put on his clothes and got in his car and drove down my driveway I sat naked with tousled hair, wrapped the pink and blue quilt around me, and cried. I wrote each beautiful detail, captured our nest by the fire on film, and that nest stayed there and stayed, for a long, long time.

            Last Friday again I slept in a quilt by the fire ‘til he stood by my head and leaned down, ‘til sweet prickle, soft whiskers brushed my lips, and I stirred and I smiled and he lay down beside me. And I thought I was safe, safe with him in my quilt by my fire in my cabin in the mountains so far away. Home with sweet man, what more could I ask? What more could I have? But I can’t have him.

            Truth whispered to me, but I didn’t listen, it whispered to me from the start. It said, Listen. Listen, I’ll seduce you in every way there is, bring your body, your mind, your whole self in step, I offer the surrender you crave. And it comes at a price, ‘though there may be no payments, no interest for a long, long time.

            The bill does come, and the bill is the ache in my chest, the bill is the tears that won’t fall. His eyes and those lashes still catch me and hold me, won’t let me go even now -- and that is the price of surrender.

            A pirate ship sounds fun, romantic at first, as he carries you up the gang plank. You sail out to sea and the pirates laugh and flash their swords, and you laugh. But after a while the water gets rough, sky darkens, and there’s another plank. One end on the ship, the other out over the stormy sea. And they say You must walk, and you see you must walk, but you’d rather they’d shoot you than send you down there.

            And you say, Not again, not this, not again, How did I leave my soft warm bed? And those glinting eyes with the eyelashes say, You thought this time...

            And under you go.

*     *     *

            But this time when she writes, she writes a piece with his name, but she changes her mind and she calls it This Time. This time when she takes a picture of her feet on the bed there’s with no blood dripping, no blood red nail polish, just feet. Sleek and pink and graceful and hers.