Nearly All Of It To Be

Driving north, Pennsylvania has this red earth, which I didn’t know it had. Colors of burnt bush, yellow flower, bush, flower, bush, flower, blue wife, burnt bush yellow flower. At 70 mph, the colors striated in the corner of your eye. A 6 hour drive turned 8 when I asked god to show me a sign. Then I hear the sound of rubber pulsing pavement, and I pull over on a bend, amidst strange rock and mist coming off semi-truck tires as they go by, and I look down at my own deflated tire. This is not the sign I was desperately begging for. But a sign nonetheless.

If I don’t have a grasp on this situation, I drive the highway. The accelerator is soft under the foot, and I like the pushback it gives me after ascending a mountain. Then I ease off the gas, making a wide turn which opens into a full bend. There is a rhythm that I refuse to give up. 70 is the speed we can perform at. I wish I could tell you I’m driving north because I am a woman in the grasp of my life, but I’m actually a rodeo bunny. And until a car 15 miles under the speed limit pushes on my brakes and the rhythm is broken, do the thoughts come flooding back in.

When I did finally pull over, it wasn’t because of the deer. Because there was no deer, I just needed to get dressed for this wedding I was attending. I pulled onto a gravel road, stepped outside, and heard the sound of grass making a mess with the wind. I put on my black dress, and makeup, and cowboy boots, and hat. I saw the day as a September evening, and I drove on.

The wedding is for two rodeo people. A bull rider and a barrel racer. Met in Texas 2 years ago and tied it up. My own wedding was three months ago. A photographer I kinda knew who shoots rodeos brought me here. I want to say I didn’t understand the situation, but I did, and the first opportunity he had, he wanted to slow dance, but it was an anniversary dance. The DJ called out who has known each other for less than 24 hours, and we sat down, while others continued. Married for 3 months! They announced. I have something I need to confess. I looked up at him. I’m married. Married for 6 months, they went on. He looked at me with as much shock and betrayal as I expected. 1 year! Wow, that’s a crazy confession to make during this dance. 5 years! I know I just thought I should tell you sooner, before the night went on. 10 years! I’m sorry for not telling you before coming here. 30 years! I just didn’t know it would be like this, and what I'm supposed to text you by the way, I'm a married cowboy, so don’t try me. 60 years! There was one couple left, 80 years old, in such a tight embrace they almost looked like one. How long have you been married? Three months, I told him.

The wedding was in Troy, and afterward we slept in separate beds at Motel 16 on 16 Motel rd and he took pictures of me wrapped in an American flag.
At dawn, with the rain hitting the ground, I looked at the beauty of my husband through the holes that the rain made on the pavement. How much beauty is still left. I got in my truck and kept on driving.‍ ‍

Since a few months ago, since the husband and I started taking weeks apart, I’ve been going to rodeos. All of them under the vastness of the blue sky, which has nothing on the husband's beauty. I like the breathing of the bull under the rider, and just before they open the shoot, he regrips the rope again, finding the hold, his eyes just as wide open to what lies beyond the fence. Because here we hold firm to faith through violence and the animal beneath who’s hurting, wishing for the ride to stop. And the men who ride briefly get the mystery of God in their mouths and swirl. Hoofs hit ground. And the audience gasps at the beauty.

When I finally lay down in her bed, I wanted to cry, but didn’t tell her because everything horizontal hurts. Or not seeing the horizon, like not seeing the future, because you simply can’t guess what lies ahead. She turned off the lights and said I love when it’s raining and the sky is bright. And she’s right; the sky is shining off like some trapped thing behind it wanting out. My friend is like that. She can turn the most simple moment into a gale. Like this morning, after we stayed up too late puzzling out why I am the woman that I am, she washed a bowl of rice for 15 minutes. Entirely trying to get all the starch out until the water ran clear. It never ran clear, but she served it to me with an egg and kimchi because taking care means giving someone something, even if God is in the kitchen also making other plans.

When I got to her house that night and laid in her bed, we both looked at the strange glowing from the window, and she told me how I’m not a bad woman or a bad wife, but how I maybe don't love him enough to not hurt him. We lay there so long trying to understand why I got married. Because I love him. Then why divorce. Because I love him, but in that I don’t know how to be the woman that I want to be.

After breakfast with her, the situation felt more manageable, like I had hope. I told her how much I was screaming for a sign while driving here but all I got was a flat tire. We both agreed to God’s sensible humor, and she began reading a poem, Nearly all of it, to be as a wife has a cow, a love story. All of it to be as a wife has a cow, all of it to be as a wife has a cow, a love story. As to be all of it as to be as a wife as a wife has a cow, a love story, all of it as to be, all of it as a wife all of it as to be as a wife has a cow a love story, all of it as a wife has a cow as a wife has a cow a love story. I laughed at the simplicity and I thought about the deer I could have hit or the wife I could have been but am not. To say beauty is truth and stop. Rather than to eat it. Rather than to want to eat it. I overlooked one thing. As she went on with the cow I thought that the Beautiful when I encountered it, would turn out to be pior, inside my own heart, already eaten. Not out there with purpose, with temples, with God. Inside. He was already me. Condition of me. So I keep going to the rodeo and looking at the beauty. Well, life has some risks. Love is one. Terrible risks. Laney would say, Nearly all of it to be as a wife has a cow, a love story. On a September evening, here is my advice, hold. Hold beauty.

xo,

toute petite nika