Waiting for laundry

You sit there atop the washing machine, in a flash I mistake for boredom I flashback to a memory never had but ever present. "What's on your mind?" You ask with a start.

"Well, I don't expect this to make any sense here and now, but I feel all these things we experience day to day are echoes of each other. While we're meeting in this unusual place on this strange night for the first time, something about you reminds me of something looming, like something ancient still unheard crescendoing. I plan to narrow these thoughts to a poem, a Piece of Eight, as I often do, but my thoughts on the matter feel ill contained now, and I was wondering if, in light of the context I've shared, you wouldn't mind hearing me out?"

You lean back with a sigh, half playful, half annoyed that this was the direction I decided to go when I finally got you alone for a good 30 minutes as the wash cycle churns underneath. Your tone shifts once more to genuine though before adding "What else is there to do, I'd love to hear it."

My focus narrows somehow to the discourse at hand rather than the beauty that sits before me, and I begin. "I have gotten a resounding sense that still this story is meant to end another way, as if it were impossible to end the way I imagine. I would discard this notion right away, but the sense began this time with you. So I met it head on, and think that there could well be moments that your heart wants only to stay, but you can't explain why you must go. My sincere hope is that this has been stitched off stage, thus all the delay, but if this is not yet the case let me say: never tell me 'yes' when your answer is 'no.' Not for anything so permanent as love anyway. If it is not real then do not say it is, for I would take fighting to make it so any day over finding out we never had it at all. In the same breath might I add that you should never expect me to say 'no' when my answer is 'yes.' Do not expect me to bow out, even long past my dying breath, if it so requires. There are ways to lock me out, but I will find another door, one not so legally barred, although please please never go that far. I will not lie and love another, for a lie so deep is like annihilation to me. Do not expect some day, no matter how far down this dreary line I describe, for me to ever be happy with someone else. And if it feels like every day you have not come is like getting left at the altar, only buried deep so as not to uproot me, beneath the blazing hope that this time will be different than what has been glimpsed, and that I must simply see it through, then that is a truth I carry, and I will keep carrying until it is undone, by your hand or by my unraveling. If this forces a paradox, I have no defense or apology, I was made to love you and what's done is done. I do not want some second or hundredth pass conciliation version of you, I want the whole thing. From where I stand this is still, to this very moment, a very real possibility, and I will not give it up for anything. Know that any time I've tried to run, in good faith and self possessed, it has been with you squarely ahead of me. The paths I take must certainly seem circuitous, and mayhaps maddening from your perspective, the one to which I speak anyway, but this is who I am, and I will not be dissuaded. I hope it never comes to this, but this realm and every other will crumble before my love for you, even if I do not intend such things. I figured with that being the case, it would be best to say so now. But again, let them crumble, let it all fade, before ever once saying 'yes' to me on this matter when you do not mean it."

You look shocked, downright gobsmacked. How long had I been talking? It felt like such a rant, but the kind so narrowly focused that the constant empty rantings of the world instead fall quiet, and truth instead rings through. Then your eyes narrow and you lean forward once more with a smirk as you open your mouth to speak.