I Only Eat Ponchatoula Strawberries Now

     Like many out there, I read PostSecret.  There's only one I have saved on my computer.  It says "Will trade sex for affection."  Unlike so many others I have found, this one has defined me.  I am not this girl anymore.  I work really hard at not being that person.  I am married to a man who has helped me greatly.  It seemed like a questionable marriage at first; it was so sudden and we are so different.  He lets me be me without letting me do the things I do.
     I ran into a former lover recently.  Actually, I knew he worked in the area I was in, and I kept an eye out for him.  When he walked by me, it was quick and he didn't notice.  Why would he expect me?  I lived two hours away when...  He didn't have time to talk, and with me would want no reason.  Whatever I have written since, he has always been "The Poet."  He will always be The Poet in the unfortunately long list of men.  I remember him fondly because I should have loved him.  And maybe I did.
     The Poet is a writer, and artist. He is lean and light-skinned. His black hair is so curly it wraps itself in your fingers and pleads with you to tug it in ecstasy. Nothing comes more naturally to his eyes than a smile, or a kiss to his lips. He moves like a dancer in the shape of a man.
     I attribute my favorite memory to him alone.  It was like fiction, it was so good.  We hadn't seen each other in a while and were meeting for coffee.  That's all it was supposed to be.  It turned to dinner, and a tour of the city, then to sleeping together, and an entire weekend misty with pure bliss.  It was more than that.  It was leather and denim, cotton sheets, and dew-filled mornings.  It was a golden hour that rivaled any filmmaker's perfect day:  the grass so green it bled into the air and the sky so blue it melted the sun.  It was a motorcycle and medium roast.  It was off the interstate.  It was a chilly evening and tousled hair.  It was slowdancing to Norah Jones, pasta, and the warm scent of naked flesh.  It was touching someone and feeling more than human.  The Poet introduced me to his family.  We ate dinner with them.  And when the slow jazz played alone in his living room, each languid note counted out the moments in history that would be with me forever and shape what I expected out of love. 
     At 19, he was as much man as I woman.
     That was the problem.  Love like that isn't for real people, not for hearts as young as ours.  Artists' souls need to be broken before they can find each other the way we did.  One night, not long after that weekend, he came to my city.  Our last moments together was him asking me to return with him.  He asked more than once.  And I kept refusing.  It was agony.  I should have gone.  Oh, how different my life could have turned out.  The rational side of me stayed sober and firm.  My more mercurian side ripped itself to shreds and almost ran away on its own to be with him.  It wanted the drama, lust, living in near-sqaulor just for the sake of being happy with him.  But I had to stay in class, had to keep my crappy job and crappy apartment, had to stay on track. 
     I don't adapt well to change.  I depend on consistency like a drug.  It is currently the only drug I have, my only sanctity, only hope for life.  To throw my life into upheaval for the possibility of a few months of true happiness would have been dangerous for both me and him.  That's all it would have been.  I would have broken, like I later did with someone else.  And he wouldn't have been able to handle it, like that someone else wasn't. 
     Right now, my life is not how I expected it to turn out; but I am happy.  I could be happier (if I had the funds), but that is true for many.  I regret not loving him more, but I know now, that it was the right thing.  I am irrational and seem to survive only on blind luck.  I admit that I am lucky in having had that weekend with him.  How many of you out there can say you've had the pleasure of experiencing an earth-moving experience?  How many of you could write factual fiction about a time in your life that stands out like a perfectly made piece of art?  How many of you have even had the opportunity to love someone so beautifully?
     If I had one thing to give The Poet, it would be Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (because his Love in the Time of Cholera is too straight-forward, and would break my heart to know it couldn't really happen).  The woman I wish I was taught me that Emma Bovary had to die, as punishment for being a poor reader.  Like Don Quixote, she could not discern the world she read from the world in which she lived.  I come dangerously close myself, and far too often.  That weekend with him almost had me convinced that fiction wasn't just a deliriously enticing optical illusion.  In my life I have had one mentor, two failed suicide attempts, three loves (The Poet, The Pretender, and The Da Vinci), and millions of pages.  I want The Poet to know that in Fiction, I will always regard us as Constance and Mellors, and in Reality I am sadly more like Carol Kennicott (that itself is perhaps a reason for future attempt number three).  If the world works, and I truly am saved by blind luck, then he should read Marquez and remember that time turns in a circle and all things happen when due.  I am not implying that I will ever give up what I have with my husband, nor asking that The Poet should wait for me.  In the future, though, should the question come up again, I would gladly run away with him.  But for now, we finally haunt the same city at night; and it is painful to be so near without that closeness.