Watching the Dreams Die: Don't blink...

What hurts most is watching the dreams die—having blueprinted the simplest of mornings to our entire future and having those same plans suddenly ripped apart… in my face…by his hands as if saying they weren’t good enough. I’m more disheartened than anything. I couldn’t look at him, I could fault him, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t blink. If I blinked I cried. If I cried I would keep crying. If I kept crying I couldn’t stand. If I couldn’t stand I couldn’t leave, and it was time for me to go—hail a cab and evaporate. I wanted to raise my voice in objections; this is arguable, Jerome, you cannot be serious! But he hadn’t flinched a whisker from the moment I walked through the door 'til I sped off on the bus the next morning. He knew what he going to tell me before he said it. He rehearsed it. This is how it is, he said—so diplomatic, so well-reasoned, We can’t continue this; as if this had never a meaning.

I picked up my things from his apartment last night; both trunks, my clothes and toothbrush. I had cried to the point of dehydration, face scummy with snot, holes worn under my eyes from wiping tear after tear after tear after tear. Ken, I begged myself, please say something—he picked up my trunk, Ken don’t let him take that trunk outta this apartment, and walked it to the car…Ken. I had to scream before I spoke—I had to scream because if I didn’t I woulda cursed at him and this wasn’t his doing. It was mine. On one side I feel if it wasn’t this issue that separated us it would’ve been another. I’ve just never seen something with so much potential die so hard so fast. He closed the car shut and suggested we be friends after this—he suggested/assumed I could possibly look at him without ever wanting him, talk to him without ever pleading for him, love him without ever loving him again. Damn, Jerome…damn. He suggested I forget how he sleeps and how breathes while he dreams. He suggested I forget how I was almost there, Jerome!—How I almost had it! I almost memorized your breathing!—and now you suggest I forget? You suggest I can handle the idea of you sharing what you called our bed and tolerate my successor calling you Brown Boy?...Brown Boy? You tell that bitch you’re my Brown Boy!

So be friends? Be friends but forget our home in Evanston, and forget the building, forget school and starting our own business, forget the dreams, Jerome? Our dreams?--and how you make me feel. Absurd!

But for you, Jerome?—anything…name it! It’s a power that you’ve always had yet never exercised! Exercise it!

You said, Jerome, not my words but yours, I will be here for you as much as you would like me to be, all you have to do is call and I will be there. Don’t lie t’me, Jerome!—because I want you here NOW. I’m still waiting for my invitation back home. I wanna come home, RomiE.

But promise me…please promise that on graduation day you sit in the middle between my family and friends, because that’s where you belong, and promise me… please promise that you’ll be standing beside me when I sign my first book, Jerome…and promise me… please promise that if this was true love that you fought your damnedest and if this is the product of all that potential and all that true love…so be it, but promise that you’re fighting with me… I can't see the keyboard, baby...I blinked.

I love you…
Ken