Do You Need From the Knees of Your Heart?
By Julia R. DeStefano
(Part of the thrill of writing is inspiring fellow authors to do what we thought was impossible. This morning, I read a piece and before I knew it, I had my own little vignette in the tradition of it. Stylistically, this is very different for me, but it was very fun to ponder and then write. What do you want?)
Do You Need From the Knees of Your Heart?
I want you close. In those moments, we become something else. I want you closer. I want you even closer than that / where the warmth of your eyes radiates through me / lighting me up. I want to be like that split-screen scene in the Cary Grant movie where he and Ingrid Bergman lie in their respective beds, thinking out loud over the phone. I want to be the scene where Audrey says, “Are you going to call me?” / and then the part later on in the movie when she whispers, “Well, come on!” I want the playful proposition. I want contentment / content to just be. I want to share the bed. I want us to have our books / to make whole discussions out of what we’re reading like Abigail did with “her dearest friend” John. I want you to explore my carefully-curated library. I want you to run your fingers along each book’s spine and then along mine. I want to let you into the space where I let no one else / beyond the space of my bed / into the deepest recesses of my heart / into the very depths of me that quiver when you touch me there. I want to show you new ways to touch me and my reactions. I want to do something that makes a difference. I want to brew more than one cup of coffee in the morning. I want to cook more than one egg. I want to take a long shower and purposefully drop the soap. I want you to see me in nothing but a towel or your t-shirt. I want to show off my toned body, and let you be your own cartographer. I want to blow you away with my passion. I want to see if I’m meant to have a little person of my own sometime. I want to do something more than just sitting here pretending I don’t want these things / burying myself in work to try to forget. I want to see you smile again and again, and if I’m the cause of it, all the better.
I want to tell you everything because it’s made me who I am / and how I view this life and love and second chances. I want to hear about your days when you want to share them. I want to be the one who understands you / because they say we all have one person who truly understands us. I want you down on the knees of your heart. I want to meet you there. I want you to come get me. I want a bottle of wine turned Frangelica on the deck with our favorite music on. I want a bottle of wine. I want endless rides with wheels and without. I want to be each other’s net because just getting up every morning and navigating this world is a leap. I want to always see you looking at me the way that you have / even when life has me feeling more like an exposed nerve than a Red Queen.
I want to let you in. I want my solitude. I want you to burst through the door / maybe you’d even say, “Oh yeah!” / knowing you bring out the laughter and the playfulness in me that I thought I’d lost. I want my walls to melt away. I want you to sit down next to me / ask me what I’m working on / talk to me about my projects and my writing / try to find yourself like Waldo within these mountains of pages because you know you’re always within my lines, even if not deliberately. I want to recite my newest pieces to you first. I want you to hold me while I figure it out / and refuse to take “I’m fine” for an answer when I give it. I want you to sit with me in the stillness when the moments call for it. I want to sit with you in your stillness if you’ll have me there. I want to cheer on our favorite teams. I want us to never stop teaching each other or wanting to learn. I want the exponential power of our rawness / which is really just the flowery way of saying that I want us. I want the quiet love in your eyes as you watch over me. I want to flip through the cookbook to decide what to make for dinner. I want to make chocolate mousse for dessert. I want to be the dessert served up any way we want it, however we need it / like my favorite Journey song.
And to quote J. Janz: “I want to know something that can anchor this feeling, that will make me stop wringing my hands, that will make me be able to come to bed.”
What do you want?
© Julia R. DeStefano
