Lake Walk & Love

There are always couples there. Must be something about lakes; people go in pairs. Once in a while you see a single man who sits and watches, and obviously, creeps everyone out. I wonder when I go if I also would be considered a Creeper.

I first pass a couple. She has wild, untamed, curly, frizzy, everywhere-like, red hair. It graces her shoulders, bare from her tank top that V's to show a lot of cleavage. She's heavy, but it works and her outfit screams that she's alive just as much as her hair screams that she is free. He is facing her three-quarters. Dark hair, a collared shirt. They're kind of making out, pausing here and there to just hold each other and study those who pass them by. Anyone can see the LIFE that spills out of their love. Life.

I walk on in an attempt to find another space to occupy. The building at the end of the pier is empty and I wonder at how my fortune could be so good. As I get closer, I listen to the water lap at the boards under my feet. The railings that beg me to climb over them, the chains that ask me to move them. There is a ship, something that I can imagine taking me to faraway places where the distance between me and my life is so great that anything in my mind can drift away at will. The masts stand tall, the woodwork beautiful.

Then I see a figure, sitting just beyond the building. I go closer, moving to the other side, and then I see the second figure. Yes, always in pairs. Two females. Not standing close together. Talking. I focus on the water and the beating I hear against the rocks. My feet dangle over the water, knees hanging over the edge of the pier. I study the distant horizon and the lights reflecting on the water. I want my surroundings to consume me but they do not. She starts crying, and I decide that's when I should probably leave.

On my way back, I think about everything. How you told me you would get a divorce. How I saw the papers up on the computer screen. How there is a phone number sitting in our den with the number to a two bedroom apartment on it. And I don't know. When you told me on the phone...I don't know. Like a brick wave of sadness, but not because I'm sad about it. Rather, I'm sad that my life went this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I swore this would never happen to me.

I passed the love creating life couple on my way back. They smiled at me as they swung their interwoven hands between themselves. This wasn't supposed to happen to me.