Heidi ~ May 29

 

I don’t know what to say to you so I avoid the call.  I said, “we will talk soon,” at your request sort of meaning it at the time. But what is there to talk about?  We have had very different lives for 50 years. You have a place in my heart, but the young Julian, the one who picked up my 7-year-old from school where she wanted to claim you as her father because you are Black and she was a White minority at PS98 on the edge of Harlem.  I don’t remember that we ever said things to show we got each other, understood each other, loved each other.  You wooed and wooed, but I’m not sure who you were wooing. You wrote messages on the conference room black board where we worked: “You are my centerpiece,” from Hendricks Lambert and Ross, the music you introduced me to.  You moved from Chicago to NYC settling down the street from me on East 88th, for me you said, although I didn’t ask you to.  We stayed together most nights, Kelly sleeping on your couch.  We were a couple, a pseudo-family.  You gave me the attention I craved, the sense of being special, desired. I don’t need that anymore, not in that way. 

 

I remember things about you: how you were coming down the block to go to the Black Panther’s Chicago office just as a police raid was taking away Huey Newton, you narrowly escaping arrest yourself.  I remember you revered your grandmother who told you, “the only time I made a mistake was when I thought I did.”  I remember how you sat on the edge of a couch like you were about to bolt, and how uneasy that felt to me.  

 

I remember YOU, but I don’t remember ME. 

 

We are strangers now, illusions of ourselves at 30.  You call and say you want to hear my voice. I feel the pull of your need to get something from me.  Something I don’t want to give, whatever it is. We have had our time. 

 

So I will let it go, even though I said we will talk soon.