The Path

Photograph by Mathias

From New York Magazine:

I met this really beautiful woman at an artist colony and we had a terrific affair and if you don’t know it colonies are good for work or no work and this was a no work summer. She lived with someone back in the city so the understanding was that after our time at the colony we wouldn’t be lovers anymore but you know I do kind of believe happy people don’t have affairs. I left the colony first then she did. It was October and we had still never spoken. That was the plan and I was okay with it. I’d take long walks with my dog and I told everyone I could about the wonderful beautiful affair I had had that summer and it excited me the telling but the thing was totally done. I went to the dog run one day and I saw a woman from out of town that I knew and I told her as I would tell anyone that fall all about my love. This woman was a martial artist so of course in her body and her mind she had wonderful powers. Her powers had something to do with geomancy and the earth and balance. She was kind of a warrior witch — and a writer too. She looked at me after I had told her my story and she said and you haven’t called her. She looked deep into my eyes. No I said. She tipped her head just slightly as if her whole musculature was a question mark that dug deep into my spinal column or something. It was everything I could do to stay still and not return that powerful curl. It was doglike and she was the master and we parted in silence soon after that moment. Perhaps that isn’t true. I walked up the steps of my apartment building where I still live and I called the colony lover at work. She was stunned and our conversation was filled with deep pregnant pauses and of course we made a date.

And soon we were at it again, that hot incredible love was on in full force and soon she left her girlfriend in Brooklyn and moved into an apartment close to me and we continued our incredible love. There was a path, just a paved trail between those tall apartment buildings on First Ave connecting my major block (First) with hers which was A and we called it the path because it was an eerie non urban feeling connection between my dwelling and hers, it was part of the fairy tale of our love and we would cross it at all times of day and night sometimes carrying food, sometimes just carrying us and even my dog who was deeply loved by everyone at this time. Rosie basked in our love. But wait none of this has actually happened yet.

“Eileen Myles on the Excruciating Pain of Waiting for Love”, New York Magazine