Most days I don’t think about those flowers, but tonight I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful they were and how I hated seeing them when I was at my worst. I hated them for being so pretty and delicate. The agony is multiplied a thousand-fold, as if I’m sad for not only myself, but someone else too.
Turns out, Thomas Abrams isn’t a mystery anymore. He’s just a man in love with someone who doesn’t love him back. It demystifies everything about him, and it breaks my heart in a million ways. I pick up his book and read the poem again. I lick his words as if I’m licking his soul, his heart, his wounds.
Now that I know this about Thomas, the allure should be gone…but it’s still there. It makes me want to run and run until I find him and ask him, What does it feel like? Are you as lonely as me? As lost and angry? Are you insane like me?
My agony, curiosity, anger, heartbreak…everything pours out of me onto a blank piece of paper. My trembling fingers fly and I write my very first poem.
For Thomas.
The Bard
Love is a scary thing. It’s too powerful, too awe-inspiring, too life-changing for a man like me. I’ve seen it. I’ve believed in it, but I never wanted it for myself.
But when I saw her, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what I thought, what I wanted. At the first sight, I fell.
Hadley.
She was walking down the corridor, her arms laden with books, her honey blonde hair fluttering in the air. A frown marred her forehead. All I wanted to do was rub my thumb between her eyebrows and erase it. There was something about her that spoke to me. Maybe it was the way she walked, huddled, shrunken into herself, or it could have been her parted lips, dragging in air out of exertion. Whatever it was, it called to something inside me, something I didn’t know I had—a sort of protective instinct, perhaps. She passed me by without sparing me a glance, without knowing how she shifted my world with that one frown.
Years later, I still feel the same. I see the bunched lines between her brows and downturned angles of her mouth, and I want to crush the source of her distress.
Trouble is, this time it’s me.
I put those lines on her beautiful face. They rest when she’s silent, simply listening to what Grace, Jake’s wife, is saying to her, but they come alive when she throws Grace a tight smile.
Hadley has lost weight, the shine of her skin is gone, and the dark bags under her eyes give her a haunted, weak look. These outward signs make me feel helpless, angry—at myself, at the world, I don’t know.
A distinct pain originates in the back of my skull and travels up my scalp. I know it won’t be long before my head is full-on aching.
“You okay, man?” Jake thumps his hand on my shoulder.
We are at Jake and Grace’s house for dinner. It’s sort of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood kind of thing. Hadley and Grace are busy in a conversation at the kitchen island, though it’s mostly Grace talking; Hadley is a listener. Jake and I are here, occupying the couch in the living room.
The chill of the beer bottle seeps into my overheated fingers as I take a long pull, looking away from my wife. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“You can talk to me, you know. I’m here for you.” His eyes move from me to Hadley and back again.
My teeth grit at his interference. It’s not interference, I tell myself. Jake is the kind of a guy who’d be concerned, but I’m not the type to share. Words have the power to make things true. Just like some people don’t talk about their nightmares because it might make them come true, I don’t want to discuss what’s wrong in my life, in my marriage.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Everything’s fine.”
Jake senses my unease and lifts his hands in surrender. “Okay. No pressure.” He takes a sip of his own beer. “So Sarah pretty much hates you.”
Glad for the subject change, I say, “Sarah pretty much hates everyone.”
“Yes, but not everyone argues with her at staff meetings, and not everyone points out—and I quote—‘how shitty the syllabus is.’ That’s all you.”
“It is shitty.”
“You’re not going to make my job easier, are you?” He shakes his head, growing serious. “You can’t pull stuff like this now, Thomas. You can’t text me and dash out when I want to introduce you to people. You can’t insult your colleagues. You aren’t a poet anymore. You’re a teacher. A team player.”
Not a poet.
Jake didn’t mean anything by it, but it needles me all the same. The throbbing in my skull intensifies, on the verge of exploding with a thousand thoughts. It makes me feel tired, exhausted—the feeling I get when I’ve labored over a poem for hours, polishing it, chiseling it until it shines…or until I can’t work on it anymore because all my words have dried up.
“Yeah. I know.” I sigh, running my hand through my hair. “I know you’re doing me a favor, man. I don’t mean to piss all over it. It won’t happen again.”
And I mean it. If this job rights all the wrongs I’ve done, I’ll take it.
“Good.” Jake salutes me with his bottle. “How are the students? We got a decent batch this year, right?”
As if Jake’s question is a trigger, I see her in flashes, as if my consciousness has clicked snapshots of her without my knowledge. Impish, wild, violet-colored eyes. Loud, uninhibited laughter. Smoke threading out of her pouty lips. The savage, dark curls that never seem to stay still. Her purple fur coats—who wears fur coats, anyway? Her voice that digs up the buried words inside me. Merciless words. They make me forget I’m not a poet anymore.
I can’t be—it’s the fate I chose months ago—but words come to me now because of her, as though she is my muse. I don’t want a muse. I don’t want Layla Robinson in my thoughts.
I grip the neck of the bottle tightly, restless, unable to sit still. I take another long pull of my beer. “Yeah. Decent,” I say in reply to Jake’s earlier question.
“That bad, huh?” He rests his arms on his thighs and gives me a meaningful look. “Listen, go easy on them. Not everyone is Hemingway in the making. Look at the spirit, not the talent.”
“Is that my first lesson on how to be a teacher?”
“If you want it to be.”
“You’re full of wisdom tonight, aren’t you?”
“I’m always full of wisdom.” He grins, making me scoff.
We talk until it’s time to go. Hadley thanks Grace for having us over and they hug. Jake and I pat each other’s shoulders.
It’s a bit of a drive to our place from Jake’s house since they live off campus. As I start my car, I see Grace and Jake kissing and giggling like teenagers in the rearview mirror. It intensifies my headache even more.
When Hadley is all buckled up, I pull out. An instant sense of relief overtakes me at her nearness. My fingers twitch on the wheel with the desire to touch her skin, the curve of her cheek, her graceful neck—but I don’t. She won’t like it.
“So, uh, did you have a good time?” I cringe at my question, my eyes on the snowy road. Might as well have asked about the useless weather. I’ve never been a conversation starter, but for her, I try.
“Yes.” She nods, giving me a glance that lasts only a second before turning back to the window.