Gloria. She was the ground beneath my feet. She was my air and she was my tormentor. She swept into my life and took over. She became my passion, my worship, and my days. Looking back at the blur that we called love, I can’t tell what was up or what was down. Did she truly love or was I the lover.

Who would have thought that a simple tickle in the wind would have triggered this flood of memories and feelings? It was this tickle that drove me to seek out the crumbling cigar box filled with tokens of our intertwined time together. Gloria. She gave me pictures, she wrote me letters. She wrote of New York, icicles, flesh, blood and Paris. She whispered when she wrote. She used her camera not as a work of art but as a medium to enter her mind. She was my ground. Her images were so vivid, so daring – so her. Now these words and images haunt me. Why do I still keep them here resting atop of my closet?

The papers of her letters still carry a scent that reminds me of our times beneath the sheets and above the people. It only now just struck me that we always made love above the Earth; not once in a street level room. We rarely kissed on the street. Her letters often spoke of streets and of death, cemeteries and tombs. It was not until the climax of her downward spiral that I realized what these overbearing themes meant; though they were never cries for help.

“Tears melting into wax”, were the last words I got from her before she went away. I still don’t’ know their true meaning or destination. Were they the words of ideal love, true sorrow, or a fragile grasp on reality?

When did it become obsession? Was it obsession from the start? After all, she found me; she found me near my home. She didn’t seem to be full of corruption in the sweet early days. She was full of wonder and beauty. She came to me with desire and friendship and I took at face value. When she started sending letters, I felt closer to her. Her time away from me while we were together made me miss her more that I thought I could. Now, I know she intended this. Everything about her now feels like premeditation.

She was always obsession. Her interests would fade, wind up and down. She never had any addictions, only obsession. From the start I saw the ripples of her obsessions: her snowglobe collection, her photography and her need for chaos. Wait, her need for chaos was not an obsession, it was a way of life – it just happened.

What I am left here to wonder is, why she wanted me? When did she start spying on me? When did I become an object of affection? When did I become the focal point for her camera’s lens? When did that woman who lived the streets of Madrid and Paris, live me?

(C) Copyright 2006, Marty Finestone