So you decided a long time ago against hoping, in the course of beating the tides of your love against the unforgiving shores, to pull in more than a grain of affection here or there, and then wailing at the disparity. It's a little embarrassing, even if you try to keep in mind that the tide eventually wins, because while one part of your brain is all, "Look at the Grand Canyon!" the rational part knows your one life to live is not a geologic age. Your life is a magic act, and you can conjure, and you can conceal; you can pretend it's not about manipulation at all. But it is. 

I mean, you'd worked the trick out two decades ago. The fact that you cried at your wedding about the woman nobody could love marrying the man who could love nobody was certainly a little about the ironic truth and the beauty in the balance of the sentence, but more about the incredible amount of alcohol you consumed.

When you put on a show for years, your own success should not surprise you. The More Loving One was always your stage name. In your act, it is always you who picks up pretty stones to please someone, carries them until your pants are as weighted as Woolf's; you who spends dreamtime on other people; you who gives over time to anybody with a happiness otherwise reserved only for sleep. You were never going to be in debt again, and you won't be.

So. You don't get to feel sorry for yourself, or confused. You don't get to be surprised when your prestidigitation ends with your hands always open and always empty. 

Five things I am good at:
editing
explaining how I feel
arguing
playing games
organizing

Five things I suck at:
sports
taking things at face value
forgiveness
keeping routines
naming my weaknesses

Three things I am surprisingly good at:
making up new lyrics to songs on the spot
dealing with bureaucracy
haircuts

Three things I surprisingly suck at:
keeping my desk clean
making phone calls
figuring tips

You are angry, and then hurt, and then angry at yourself for being
hurt. And then hurt again. This is pretty much all there is to work
with, and you are working at it whenever you are not
consciously working with anything else. You cannot tell the difference
between licking wounds and picking scabs, and you are doing both. You
spend days working, trying,
but every moment is a reproach, and each reproach is three-fold: what
you heard, what you listened to, what you keep replaying. The shadows
made by cobwebs have
an opinion about you, and they aren't impressed. This is what it comes
to. Not least because of the cobwebs, not least because of the shadows,
the dirt, the secrets and the lies.

This is what it means to
know better. It means that you get five seconds of breathing room, five
seconds of living with knowledge, and then for a moment, really only,
you forget that you know and then you are down again, spiders crawling
in your heart, and hitting yourself with your own fists because you
should have known better. Worse: because you did.

The rope goes up and down and the girls holding the ends swing it out
and around, beautiful arcs, it's perfect. My hands out in front of me,
cupped towards the rope, moving with the rhythm, and at the right
moment I run and jump. I will run and jump soon. Not this swing, but
the next, the next, the next. There's a line behind forming behind me. I don't want to hold things up. I'll go on the next swing. Maybe there's not a line; maybe it's my
own impatience with myself. I can't look because I'm watching the rope. The rope slapping the ground, rising in an
arc, slapping the ground, and my hands cupping the rhythm, and all I
have to do is jump, and all I can think about is the sting of the rope
when it hits my legs, when I miss. Not this swing, then, but the next,
the next.

It's hard to enter a room without soaking up all the emotion in it. If
you watch what you're doing it is okay, because you can absorb amazing
quantities. Just take in what wants to be observed, one quick coast
across the surface, the prepared face. Then slide under the surface of
that to find the secrets. It can be done. But a moment's inattention
and you're taking in too much, more than you can. Or should. Touch of a
hand and you have cleaned the spill and taken off the layer of the
surface and now you've got a mess you didn't mean. Something to cover
up. You shouldn't have seen that, you say, that shouldn't have
happened, I shouldn't know this, it was too secret, but also you keep
looking to see if that's really what you saw. You cannot pretend for
long that you intend the best if you are going to insist on being so
curious, yellow and blue.

And it's hard to remember that most of
what you absorbed was meant to be discarded. You chop insults and carry
grudges all day long, til there is no time left for anything else.
Squeeze the secrets from you and there will be nothing left of you;
squeeze away those things you weren't meant to keep and you will be as
empty as the cracked bowl. In the absence of what you've collected you
would be so empty that you could never be filled; not even suitable for
folded bits of paper. They wouldn't throw you out because of
sentimental value, and that is all.

So this is what you hold: nothing of your own. Nothing you were meant to have.

In this act, you are the one who doesn't get hit. They throw all kinds of shit at you and the trick is that you knew where they were going. You'd be so pretty if, they say, and the knife lands a millimeter away. You never used to, they say, and that hits below the belt but it's still just a shade off. Four knives, five if you count the one, and every one of them is short of the target, because you were the target and you stood so still; you were always ready.

In the next act, you ride on the backs of lions, or horses in a pinch. It's always glamorous.

And now you conjure. In this world, you create empty spaces where people put their secret wishes and then you fill the emptiness. Flowers, a scarf, a rabbit: the thing that is missing. You return what you stole at the beginning. Or better you give back what they didn't know they lost, and they act like you did them a favor. It is not a surprise given your skills of prestidigitation that you would would always wind up with your own hands empty. You flourish.

And now the crystal ball. There will be a beautiful person, your other half, you say, and they look past your plain face and transparent tricks to this ideal. Elusive. You fill the space until the one they want is there. They trust you, believe you, they could sit at your table til dawn looking at the props you use to tell them what's obvious. When everything you said comes true they say they always knew it anyway. Shove some paper at you, and they are so gone they were never there, and later they swear they were never at the circus.

Then there's the trapeze. So many things to be balanced. And throughout, there are the moments where you stop and wait until they clap, and they clap until their arms ache, though what you love most is the moment before the first applause. And sometimes you do it knowing there will be no applause. That they will wander back into the dark and not even know what a show they saw, thinking that this is just how their lives go.

And then there is a tent, or some space, and there is something to take off the greasepaint, and then you go to bed. And tomorrow is another day.