It had been well over 9 months, the last time I saw him. And then he bikes passed me on the street, we looked back at the same time – that blue.eyed.man and I. As we shared that one brief glimpse, his expression vague, now – was it amusement? Or surprise?

Then a couple of weeks ago, as I came upon the soup aisle, there he was in his work coveralls. I hadn’t needed soup, but all of a sudden I had a hankering. As I brushed passed him, right in front of where he’d been looking up at the top shelf. I didn’t look back. I merely swooped down and grabbed a can of cream of celery, dropped it into my basket, and swung around the corner, leaving him in my wake. Or not.

What will be will be

And that was that. Haven’t seen, nor heard from him, and I’m not sure how that makes me feel. There is still something about him I can’t quite shake, after the mad chaotic affair we shared all those days and days, so long ago it seems.

He would show up at my door, drunk as a skunk and all mushy, mushy. I kept pushing him away, but he wouldn’t go, and he wouldn’t go, and he wouldn’t go. FINALLY, he went. FINALLY, he realized he wasn’t ready for all this, not again. Not yet he said. Not EVER I wondered?

All these days have passed, and still I think of him. Yet, my desires I once had for companionship have waned. My basic requirements are more than met my Crossroads.Man, and he is more friend than lover besides, and I am enamored with him, maybe even love wouldn’t be too strong a word.

Even so, still, that blue.eyed carnival ride down the street still haunts me.

I remember once, after I’d left him my first of a string of nasty messages, where I’d told him I NEVER wanted to see him again…he was at my door, and his head went back, and he laughed and said “and how do you imagine that will work out? We live in the same village.”

If I recall, I just growled back at him.

Damn it all though Mom, I knew right from the beginning he wasn’t ready yet. But that attraction was too strong for him. And I pushed him away several times, but as soon as I finally gave in, finally started to believe that maybe I was wrong, it turned out I was indeed right. As he turned away that night, tears were in his eyes, and he said with a sob “I’m just not ready, I’m sorry. I just can’t give you what you want“.

Was I just a game for him? Some little dither on his way out of his immense sense of abandonment by his wife?

It’s over and been over since last year. Had almost been 6 months, maybe more, since I saw him. Actually, I thought he’d moved away from the village. Maybe he has, but why then in the grocery store? No, he’s here somewhere. Probably in exactly the same place I left him.

Wallowing in his wounds, drinking himself into oblivion. Back to being the wild child, he was after his father died. Living in the woods by the river with his pals all summer, skipping school, and doing whatever the hell he wanted, regardless of what his Mother thought.

To hear him tell, I wonder what she thought.

I see him as this almost feral man-child. It’s like he was never, truly, tamed. Not really. But by and by, over the years, he managed a working facsimile of someone who’s been leashed. Once that woman unleashed his collar. After those last 5 years where they fought like cats and dogs. It was only then he was set free, again.

Oh Mom, and I know better than give one’s love to a wild thing. You won’t ever get it back, not really. In the end, you would kill what you love. Probably, even though it took 35 years, she also realized that.

She took all his ID too, he told me. He just left, and never looked back. He had nothing to show him as civilized, tamed. That whole first summer after we met, well into the fall, he refused to pay his hydro, and thus had no lights, no electricity at all, and cooked all his meals outside on the campfire he had made in his backyard. Feral man-child that he was.

Then the lights came back on, and he decorated his little apartment with things. He even put sheets on his bed.

Did I bring all that about?

Maybe.

It was as I was finally turning around. As I began to see him as, em, something more. It was around that time the fear came into his eyes, and he, he, ran away to his wild ways.

He just doesn’t want to be tame.

And I know better than to give my love to a wild thing.

I do.

Love,