Parting at the lamplit doorstep, they kissed

Madysyn Amandalynn 6

The sixth part of a long narrative poem about romance in the Bay Area.

Part I — Part II — Part III — Part IV — Part V

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VI

On a rooftop Mexican place in Mission
was where they’d first met. Two tables back to back,
her friends and his. Two roaming tribes
out for a good time. The men exchanging gifts
of jokes, the girls compliments. Curious,
cordial, until a gesture of shots was made,
then names, then drinking games played.

One party readied to leave, then remarked
they would be down the street, and if they happened
to meet up, it were good fortune and good luck.
And perhaps she saw the look upon his face
and knew, closing out, he would come up,
to ask her for her number just in case,
and so hid a smile, and tried to pass it off.

“Oh, we’re just going down the street,” she said,
with a certain nonchalance. “But if you’re gone
before we leave,” he said, quite vulnerable
in response—“If I missed you after you left
I’d feel like a fool. I’d never forgive myself.”
Impressed, yet she smiled not, for in her eyes
was much that checked to see if he was serious.

He was.— She found out afterwards it was
at his behest, his urging, that his group left
El Techo that night and wound up at the club,
so he could try a further chance. And though
neither had planned on dancing that much—
how they danced! How the DJ and the drinks
and the green laser lights made them dance.

And the short night turned long, and Madysyn
cared not but let the feeling carry her on.
And if it was only desire and not love
it didn’t matter, nor did she want
to be able to tell. The way he looked at her
was enough, and her affections, returned,
was its own spell. For both it was enough.

Who anyways, at her age, knows the difference
between desire and love? Who claims he does
is not wise but foolish, for when we’re young
all is appearance, and there is only a playing
at the real thing. It’s only looking back with
experience we can say for sure what it was.
The truth of a thing we know after the fact.

And even then, below that, at the bottom
is belief, the molten core beneath
the bedrock. And Madysyn believed in love
and let herself be lost in desire trying
to find it. And when she was heartbroken the way
was flat, and desire seemed only a carousel
that spun in one empty, endless circle.

But at her best, it was to her a spiral
staircase, a Jacob’s ladder leading upwards
to sanctuary and to heavenly bliss.
And none could talk her out of it, even
herself, so deeply she believed in it,
and wanted always to feel it, and be near—
often, unintended, summoning it to appear.

There was no need to name it. It was enough
to feel, as she felt, the limbs alive and real,
the senses limned in the body in which she dwelt.
And when he texted asking for a date,
(before the normal amount of time to wait)
she grinned at her phone, and did not want to tell,
but wrote back, expectant, “Yes, sounds great!”

Their first date was coffee on the waterfront.
They lost track of time, and Madysyn was late
to Friendsday Night with Caeli and the girls.
She apologized. They said it must’ve gone well.
“Actually—fine. He seems like a great guy.
But it’s too early to tell.” And Caeli replied,
“If she liked him, she wouldn’t be here right now.”

The second date was drinks. He rode with her
on the bus back to her apartment. She leaned
her head against his shoulder and all was quiet.
Parting at the lamplit doorstep, they kissed.
“But you didn’t let him in?” said Caeli, beguiled.
And Madysyn, with a smile: “I really like him.
It’s just nice to have met someone in the wild.”

Again, on dates three and four, even after
he’d spent the night, Madysyn, as if to save
herself from too much hoping, would fight
the feelings she was catching. “He’s great but
who knows?” Not her. She did not want to.
But the moment forced itself to a crisis
on date number five at the Presidio.

Down they walked the woodline, back and forth
like two sloops harbored, rocking against a wharf.
And down Lover’s Lane in the narrow embrace
of Eucalyptus striped with shadow and light,
their talk unbroken into each new place.
So engaged were they they did not notice
time that passed, or when they’d left the forest.

Between them was an ancient purpose,
the same conquistadors had had walking
from the first presidio to Mission Dolores
to sing at mass and ask for priests’ forgiveness.
The same as US soldiers had stationed
at the post, who after many weeks apart
would pace to town to find their sweetheart.

And past parade grounds they promenaded,
by verdigris cannons standing on ceremony,
and under the shade of red roofs deliberated
where next to walk, beneath a balcony
of white stucco, among the Spanish Revival, 
whose houses revived after they were gone
for the same reason as these two had come.

It was love, though she would not say it yet,
even to herself—would not let the thought
break the surface, but dimly held it just
below the waters of her consciousness.
And there it flashed in silver in the murk,
glinting and darting down like silverfish.
To spare the wonder she would not name it.

To her it was a promissory note,
one signed by a parents’ pleasant marriage
and childhood in the suburbs of Scottsdale.
She carried it with her, but could not cash it.
Those who tried, unworthy and unrefined,
always defaulted, and so she kept it in her
possession, an expectant wish, and promise.

But now he asked her for it. Now, on a bluff
at Crissy Field, beside the tall canary palms,
he said the words she longed to hear, an alms
of passion both so badly wanted to be true.
It was love, and he could not say it yet
but was, despite himself, falling into it.
And she, as if to catch him, said, “Me too.”

And not the pack of joggers streaming by
could break their concentration on each other.
Nor women with windbreakers cinched to their waists,
nor stray dogs that paced ahead of their owner.
The world could not distract, nor the tides efface
the feeling that passed between them. All
was part of the path that led them to that place.

A sea lion lazes in the late light of the day,
slick and black and flattened by its weight.
They think, What a perfect ending to the date.
Before them, the lapping waters of the Bay,
and choiring bridge suspending the Golden Gate,
its international orange encantada.
East, the white dome of the palace rotunda. —

And the city like barnacles clinging to the hills
rises like the rocks when the tide is out.
The neighborhoods, like white, encrusted shells
upon Pacific Heights and Nob and Russian Hill,
rinse themselves in haze of heat and silence.
And the column of Coit Tower, and that spire,
the Transamerica Pyramid, rise higher still.

And all the glass and steel towers
mount the skyline in pale shadow and blue,
obelisks of SoMa and the Finance District.
And in those days what monuments we built
from such magnificent gifts as washed up
like driftwood on the Bay. Delivered by
those breakers of Fortune that roll on the tide.

And is it not love that makes it all thus?
That scrapes the sky, compels the neighborhoods
to swell? Love, that constant cause in us
to create, to raise a city out of the woods—
Yet even now, repentant on the shore,
I hesitate—I do not want to tell.
The recognition stings me all the more.

Because I was certain of what I knew not.
Because I pretended at virtue but concealed,
like Gawain, a green girdle. Because the thought
of having been wrong all these years weighs
so dearly it might drown me as the waves 
submerge the rocks and wash away the pools.
Because I doubted love, I played the fool.