bow and arrow

he is gone this weekend, but not for good. it will be for good soon, in a matter of months that seem eternal and unreal, a point in the future marked with a red tack. he is gone this weekend to chicago and you are pretending like this is it, like hes never coming back. you are trying it on, to see just how bad it will be, just how lonely and amputated you will feel, but whats making you feel even worse is that you know there is no way to know. there is no way to gague the hollowness you'll feel when its the real thing, when youve survived the dress rehersal and then youre placed on stage in front of piercing eyes, forgetting your lines and sweating your makeup off. its a holiday weekend so many of your other friends are out of town too, leaving you to scramble and clutch to people you havent spoken to in weeks, months. you cobble together a couple of them who have never met before, and go to the weekly dance party at the museum in queens. you woke up early that morning because your curtain has fallen in the night, exposing the snobby garish sunlight, causing your sheets to stick to your sweaty skin. he isnt beside you, you realize. and even though hes coming back on monday, even though you still have months of dinners and making love and getting drunk and watching cartoons, there will be a day when he has to move back to his home, when his visa will expire and you will be left with the relics, left with the bones of your relationship, left to peice and glue them together like an archeologist reconstructing an extinct thing. or you wont, you will leave them there under years of dust and rubble, and you will never wonder what the leftover parts look like.
you take the E with anne to 23rd street, and you make small talk about books and mutual friends. you dont think about last weekend, or the one before that, when you rode the same train with them, a flask on gin in both of your pockets and your leg draped over his. you and anne buy beer tickets and wander around until you meet up with brian, and slowly the patio fills up with people in shorts and bathingsuits and summer dresses and chunky jewlery from exotic places. you run into some of his friends and are so relieved to have a sliver of him, to be reminded that he exists, that hes still yours. one of his friends leaves to go buy vodka and by the time he is back you are feeling less sharp and more like the blurry colors you become when youre with him. you dance and laugh and everyones taking pictures and youre thinking, this isnt so bad. im having fun, anne and brian are getting along, we look just like everyone else here.
you go into the musuem to go to the bathroom and stop to look into a room of art. there are still photographs of people vomiting, still born children, a carved up thanksgiving turkey. there is a smaller room with a video being projected onto one of the blank walls and you walk into it. it is soundless and there is only one other couple watching it. at first you cant tell if it is a video or a projected image, because the people arent moving at all. in front of a totally white background there is a woman, dressed in a long sleeved black shirt tucked into a floor length skirt, holding the curved part of a bow right below the tip of the arrow. across from her is a man in a white shirt tucked into a pair of dark pants, holding the other side of the bow with one hand. both of them are leaning back, being supported by the weight of the other. if the man were to let go of the bow, the arrow would puncture the softest, middle part of the woman's throat. they are looking at each other with no real expression on their faces, and the only movement is the sight of their chests rising and falling, and the almost imperceptible quiver of their muscles. the couple watching it walks out of the room, their arms around each other, and you stay there, waiting to see what happens. minutes pass and their muscles begin to shake more, though neither one of them moves their feet or their arms. neither one of them looks for an instant away from the other.
you consider crying. it would be one of those cries that has no reason, one of those drawn out sobs that is for every wrong done against you, against every person; for everybody thats dreaded losing someone. tears fill your eyes as you stay there watching the video, and even though you havent decided yet whether you are going to, you know exactly what kind of cry it would be. because you didnt speak for the first 4 years of your life and everyone thought you were autistic, because of the film you watched in class last week about mentally ill people in prisions. because of solitary confinement and war. because of your teddy bear, raggedy and worn, that you found face down on the floor yesterday. because he is leaving, and he may never be back, and this may be the end and you have no idea, none at all, if youre going to be able to survive it or not. if youre going to be able to mourn and move on, or not.
you blink back the tears and decide that you arent going to cry, not that kind of cry or even the kind that has only one reason. the woman and the man are still being supported by each other-- her by the fear of being killed, and him, by the fear of knowing he can.
not a tear has escaped and you walk out of the small white room, knowing it doesnt matter if the tape rolls forever or if the arrow kills her swiftly. either way, anne and brian have probably run out of things to say, and your beer cup is empty.