Unexpected Changes
Norman’s interest in birds increases.
Birds of all kinds.
He’s flown to Alaska, Hawaii,
two western states, the Amazon.
His catalog of birds grows with each trip.
Says he has the semester off from teaching
to explain his free time.
Sara paints while he’s gone.
Still sells well…they have plenty of money.
After the last trip away
she stops painting wings on women.
He pays more attention to the birds
than he does to her.
She’s not able to travel
and going out is still hard.
She’s lonely.
This isn’t how she thought it would be.
They make love whenever he’s home
but it’s different. He creeps out of bed
in the middle of the night to flip
through bird catalogs.
She tells him she feels taken for granted, but
his eyes are too full of birds to see tears.
On this current, longer trip, she finds herself
searching the internet for houses. Small ones.
Much like the one she had before.
Room for a bedroom and her studio.
A place to go to be on her own,
where thoughts of Norman don’t follow her all day.
Maybe it’s time to go look.
_______
Home
Sara has become friends
with the neighbor next door.
He has a sister with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Similar in many ways to the long term covid
that holds Sara’s body prisoner
so understands the exhaustion, frustration
and people staring like you’re an alien
when riding in a power chair
or pushed in a transport one.
He brings her home cooked meals,
sees to it that the sprinklers out back
are working properly.
She finds a cozy place to rent near take outs
and deliveries for when she’s too weak to cook.
The neighbor moves her important things.
Clothes and art tools are all she needs.
He promises to still bring her occasional meals.
Never asks why Norman is gone.
Gives her privacy in that arena.
Norman calls her cell from the airport,
then, she guesses, from their house.
She doesn’t pick up.
He leaves no message.
If he wants to see her she’s easy enough
to find. The neighbor. Her art friends.
She needs for him to make the first move,
put in the effort to jigsaw their pieces
together once more, but
silence hangs like fog after the calls.
No pounding on the door. Taking her in his arms.
Both tearing off clothes for him to enter her
again and again throughout the night,
give her hope he had miraculously returned
to being the Norman he found inside himself
when he came back after their years
of his first abandonment.
A changed man, it seemed.
She wouldn’t trust an addict
and she’s learned this time he’s addicted to running.
_______
Moving Forward
It’s been four more days now.
Still no word from Norman.
Stress isn’t good for her long term covid,
her doctor reminds her, and she does feel weaker.
Her paint brushes weigh more than ever.
She’s napping more, dreaming about
how certain she was of their life together.
Also thinking about how dumb she was
to believe it could happen despite his trying
his hardest .
_______
The Letter
A note arrives a week late in Sara’s mailbox.
She recognizes Norman’s handwriting.
He’s been offered a job teaching in the Carolinas.
He confesses why he’s been missing,
how embarrassed he was to tell her he lost his job,
that this wasn’t just a semester off.
The house is hers and always will be, he writes.
He’ll leave his key under the big potted plant
out back. He loves her but couldn’t
be the man he hoped to be like he thought,
can’t uproot her to go off with the ‘failed’ Norman,
the one with fists clenched around his heart.
Sara sets the note in her lap.
He had already told her by his trips away
that he was leaving her emotionally,
but she had hoped he would learn how
to work out problems without running again
like he did when their boy was just five,
returning after the boy was grown,
with a child of his own, after Sara got sick.
She thought this time they had learned,
that he was back for good.
He told her he would never leave again.
She loves him but can’t risk her heart a third time.
Now she knows that if bad feelings are triggered
he would just run again.
He’s still too damaged.
Beaten by multiple fathers, locked out
of the house nights a ‘father’ was drunk. Not fed.
He ran then and found that was his way to cope.
_______
Acceptance
She waits a week, checks with the neighbor.
Yes, Norman has packed his car and gone.
She cancels her rental
and, with help, moves back into the house,
emptied only of his clothes and books.
Nothing else taken but the painting she did
of Norman and his son, her gift to him.
A colorful feather attached to a gold chain
rests on her pillow.
She tosses it into her jewelry box.
One day she may wear it…not now.
The house reminds her of vows they shared
that she hoped would last but didn’t.
It reminds her she can survive anything
_______
Closer
A year has passed.
Norman stays in touch with their son,
she’s glad to hear, but no more word to her.
He’s finished, gone,
no rev in his motor to try again.
No reply to her two emails wishing him well.
Sara has become close to her neighbor,
a former astronaut
now running a small tech company
out of his home.
Tom, his name.
She calls him Major Tom.
Loves to tease him.
They now spend part of every day together,
after her painting and his work.
Tonight is her birthday.
Tom brings her flowers.
Sparks cross the room.
He kisses her with passion for the first time
and soon they’re in bed.
Deep in want after no sex this whole year,
she expects their time to be pleasant
but not like with Norman.
When he comes inside her, a fire lights.
She wants him inside her again and again
until exhaustion overtakes.
As they wrap around each other to sleep,
she reminds herself that passion can reignite.
Even when you think it’s forever gone.
Maybe love, too.