Pieces of April

I sometimes know, with all my faith in statistics, that I will never marry. The remainder of my life stretches ahead of me in shades of orange, blue, green, and everything but the (embarrassed blush) red-velvet of a dozen crimson rosebuds on St. Valentine's Day.

But sometimes I remember things. My subconscious throws images into dreams without providing context, and they strike me. I compile these memories like the collage of a man I've not yet met. Pieces of April, but it's a morning in February. It doesn't have the same mellow metre, but it's what I mean. Kind of. I mean. Maybe it's November of the following year, and I've had a horribly debilitating accident that caused amnesia. I've got pieces of April, and it's a morning in an alternate reality?

It began, I think, with the feeling of being protected: a persistent and certain knowledge that as difficult as my life becomes, I am safe. I remember being so full of trust that I would stake my life on that love. It was not certainty in his competence, it was not a sure knowledge that he could and would save me, but rather a change in values. My physical safety was no longer the most valuable thing to me, but only doing my part in a work more valuable. Love gave me infinite courage. As perfect love casteth out all fear.

Then I remember a hand holding mine, and a presence at my side. I did not look at him, but rather went throught the world looking at it with him. I could love other people, but it was no longer my own love I was giving, but our love, and so no other men fit at my side. Perfect love filled me with patience and forgiveness. It made me part of something more complex and interesting and full than I could have been alone.

What I have seen of him poses a quandary. I can describe a few pieces, but then someday when I marry, you will come to me and say, "See, his hair is not the right color. He is too tall. You are a foolish girl for dreaming." And what can I say, but admit that I was foolish? But you will say that anyway. A year after I am married, you will come to me and say, "See, you are still afraid. See, marriage is not smooth." And what can I do but admit that I am foolish? You will have caught me believing in some airy bubble of a thing, only to find it made of glass and copper. And will it make you happy to remind me I was wrong? Even if I admit everything, you cannot convince me of it.

Everyone knows that memories change with each telling. It need not always follow that they become less accurate.

He has eyes the deep blue/green of lake water on a dark evening, and they pin me in place and make me real. And we don't gush, but I wait and he returns to me after the day, and the messes I've made and the money he has spent, and we are enough. We suffice. He has square shoulders that hold up my world and when they curl and stoop, I can brace him. He has sandy grey hair the color of the Nevada horizon at noon, and he has forged every silver thread in the heat of daily battle. I can hold my ear to his chest and hear his heartbeat like war drums on the midland plains. And I could name him, but naming is dangerous. I will hold his name as a gift, and he will don it like a jester's cap after all is settled, and he is mine. And I will take his name and cover me with it, and my sad little gift will make us laugh.

Oh, he is fine. We are fused.

But I blink, and I am not me any longer. I am looking at them, and their names and rings and entwined hours, and I smile. They are the romance in my life. I love and am loved enough by fathers and brothers. We are sisters too, and mothers and grandmothers enough. I belong among us. I can smile in my heart for marriage, and wait. I am not Green Day. I do not walk alone, and my dreams are not such as can break.