Scowling for many reasons, I pushed the hair out of my eyes and left the dark theater in search of my lyric book, a toothbrush, and the exceptional woman constantly on my mind.
I wouldn’t use “fate” to end the fourth line of this new stanza, and obviously not “concord grape.” The first part was useable—her/winter wasn’t a textbook rhyme, but that only made it more perfect—yet I couldn’t work out what word to use with shape.
Gone, and I browse the internet using Netscape? No.
Gone, and where did I put that videotape? No, but it made me grin.
Gone, and something about a great ape? Ha ha!
Great ape. Funny. Perhaps I was the ape? . . . worth considering.
Stopping by the basement bathroom, I brushed my teeth and splashed my face with water. This was my usual waking-up routine, whenever I might wake up: absentmindedly going through the motions while words played musical chairs in my mind. Since agreeing to house-sit for Leo’s parents, I’d been sleeping mostly in the recording studio on the couch. That’s where all my lyric notebooks were as well as my guitars.
Before Lisa came, I’d found it was easier to write while in the studio, trying and testing lyrics with background accompaniment via the soundboard. But now that she was here, writing music, poetry, lyrics had been just like sharing her company: effortless.
Gone, and she took all softness with her.
Gone, and empty (or emptiness?) takes a shape. . .
Shape. What else rhymes with shape? My priority was to capture this feeling, that moment upon waking, discovered loss or whatever it was.
I wouldn’t force it. If I had to force the words, then they were a lie. Studying words had been a compulsion of mine from a young age. I collected and hoarded them. I thought about how to assemble and arrange them to communicate the most truth in the least amount of syllables. I treasured them when they were real just as much as I reviled them when they were false.
Because of this, I wouldn’t force the missing line, and I was certain I wouldn’t need to. With Lisa here, the right ones would come to me.
I miss her.
Yes. That was it. I missed her. And missing someone is not just the absence of the person. Distance exists. Separation is real. It is a measurable construct, but also intangible.
This space between us is what? This space of separation is what?
Distracted, I left the bathroom and crossed the hall to the studio, flipping on the light and moving to my pile of notebooks. They weren’t organized by anything other than the approximate date, and so I picked up the only one that was neither full nor empty and wrote those first three lines of a stanza that might become a song.
Then, when I reached the fourth line, I frowned at my reflection in the studio glass. I shook my head.
Gone, and . . . what do I miss about Lisa when she is gone?
Potential answers immediately and effortlessly piled upon each other: her eyes when she laughed; her smile; her body in that white bikini; smooth, hot skin; her strength; a silk waterfall of dark hair spread over my chest while she slept; her humor; her eyes when she was angry; her kindness; the color of embarrassment on her cheeks; her voice; her surprising cleverness; her equally surprising awkwardness; how, with each breath last night, the rise and fall of her breasts pressed against my side; her eyes when she was surprised; the weight of her, the warmth, and the awareness where every inch of her touched every inch of me; her mouth; her softness.