The Lover’s House

The lover’s house is improved by fire.

Rumi

I waited for you in Barcelona.

I waited for you in Prague. 

I waited for you in the dentist’s chair: head thrown back, mouth wide open, unable to speak.

I waited for you on the bus north, listening to Rihanna, watching the olive trees wring their hands.

I waited for you on a bridge in the rain.

I waited for you in the car, driving my twelve-year old to his piano lesson, talking about math homework and the end of the world.

I waited for you at the end of the world.

I waited for you in red gingham, in a sepia photograph, an unreadable look in my eyes.

I waited for you in a church.

I waited for you in a stone forest, in a tree’s vestibule.

I tried calling you on stolen wifi from the Kentucky Fried Chicken across from the Sagrada Familia.

I waited for you in the movie theater til the final credits. In the ancient amphitheater, all the actors moving without sound. 

In the bowl of blueberries, I waited: the last sour green knot. 

I waited for you in my bed, where I read a 600-page history of debt, and also several self-help books about love, where I ate frozen yogurt popsicles and watched a show in which Nicole Kidman plays a creepy New Age Russian guru.

I waited for you in another century. Sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a man.

I waited for you in someone else’s bed. 

I waited for you in the Wegman’s between the rainbow chard and the cheese counter. 

I tried calling you from the closet of my parents’ house during Thanksgiving dinner.

I waited in the smoke from the fire pit.

I waited without a coat in January.

The next time I tried calling it was Passover, I was in the bathroom, half-drunk, while we were still wandering in the desert, eating bitter herbs and making fun of the script we were supposed to be following.

I waited for you instead of “setting an intention” or “extending my side body” or “raising my hands to my third-eye center.”

I waited for you on the banks of my marriage, staring into the murky shallows.

I waited for you in the soft blade of your fern, the shined spathe of your anthurium. 

I waited in the locked chest of your childhood, with the wedding and funeral saris, smelling of bitter camphor.

When the Berlin Wall fell, when the ice caps started invisibly melting, I had already been waiting for you a long time.

I waited for you on the corner of 47th and Baltimore.

When I thought I had been waiting for a long time, I thought about the Sagrada Familia, which has been under construction continuously since 1882.

I waited for you on the dating apps, waited for your face to appear behind the next software engineer or financial analyst posing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

In English, it is possible to wait without hope. 

I waited for you in a market stall in Karachi, in the names of the fruits you touched and weighed and cradled.

I waited for you in the airport.

Every time a plane touched down or lifted off, I wanted to text you.

I waited for you when my fifteen-year old son told me he would never respect me again for as long as I live.

I waited for you when I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh or cry.

I waited to call you, and once or twice I didn’t.

I waited for you the way I waited for my period.

I waited for you the ways Jews wait for the Mashiach.

I tried to tell myself that the waiting meant I was in touch with the cycles of suffering and rebirth, that I should be grateful.  

I was waiting for you when the factories and schools shut down and the airplanes stopped flying.

When sea lions lounged on the sidewalks of Buenos Aires and the smog lifted over Beijing and Mumbai, I waited for you.

I waited for you all summer, from the first incandescent magnolia blossom to the last yellow leaves.

I waited for you in New Jersey, while the waters rose along Atlantic Avenue.

I waited for you in the pine barrens, where there was no cell service.

I waited for you in the future that had already happened.

I waited for you in the future that would never happen.

I waited for you by getting stoned and submerging myself in water so hot the entire bathroom disappeared.

I waited for you under the tree of awe.

I waited for you on the fire escape in late April, the sun going down and my shoulders pinned to the sky.