05.13.2002 - 3:21 p.m.

I hadn�t seen him or really spoken to him for a good five months. We were sitting on a balcony, my knees pulled up in front of me, my back against the railing. His against the building�s wall. I was tired of fidgeting with the twenty-two cents I�d found on the ground. I wondered would I say it this time, that brutal truth that hovers closer each time we have one of Those Talks. I don�t want to know you. Trying to know what to say, how to say it, I bent down to adjust my anklet.

He watched. He would change the subject, since some part of him knew not to want the answers he�d demanded. I was almost ready to say it, almost hard enough, but I thought for too long, and he spoke first. �You�re still wearing that, huh.� Wanting to sound interested, but sounding to me as if he couldn�t imagine why I�d want to. I�ll admit, it�s that kind of trinket- a small copper thing suspended from an ageing leather cord, the charm still bright at the hard edges, but otherwise the flat brown of an old penny.

�I like it.� We�d had this conversation once before, a few months after the breakup, when he�d asked what I�d done with the other, a pretty beaded thing I�d bought on vacation with him in the Outer Banks. I�d told him it fell off. I�d cut it.

�That�s a neat-looking feather. You should polish it sometime.� Indulgent. I learned the word �should� from this man. I�d wanted to. I�d thought, once, that I needed the outside discipline.

I�ve lost the ability to hear anything else when he speaks.

�It�s not a feather.� I pulled it around to the front and held it up to the light.

�Oh, an arrowhead.�

�No." I am patient, but under the patience I am glad to know one more thing he doesn't see... "It�s a knife.� It�s mine. I�m mine.

I am not a pretty beaded souvenir. How cruel will I have to be before you�ll admit to yourself that I never was?

*******

I am still bitter. I am still blind. I still can�t write him gently.

I still have to say it.

-stonebridge

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