Tonight's Poet Corner: A Cabin For The Hopeless Romantic

A Cabin For The Hopeless Romantic
by Belinda Roddie

There's a cabin for the hopeless romantic.
It rises like a loose tooth from a speckled gum,
a red passion post in the middle of no man's
land - with trees. Lots of trees. This was where

I carried you, through the smallest of towns, over
dry creek beds and fallen, useless timber,
past abandoned rope swings and punctured tires
from cars nobody drives anymore. Like the beige

pick-up that smelled like pine sap and old flannel
and dog hair - because the one who adored
the joy ride in the back of that jalopy the most was
the family boxer. There's a cabin for the hopeless

romantic. Inside, the ugly black and white couch
we sat on years ago is gone; instead, there's
lounge furniture misconstrued as "classy," or
containing "rustic charm." The record player

has been replaced, vinyls tucked away like
sleeping octogenarians, dreaming about the
needle tracing their smiles with music. You
kissed me to the sound of the Beatles. We

danced to the wide-mouthed whimsies of
Randy Newman. We picked apart each other's
words like disassembling a puzzle in the living
room, and suddenly, we realized how isolated

we truly were. Because the hopeless romantic
loves idyllic solitary confinement. The hopeless
romantic installs bars in their windows, but
at least they place a vase of roses on the sill

to remind them of "nature's beauty." The hopeless
romantic handcuffs themselves to the wrist
of a memory, then drags it to the intermittent stream
so the current kisses their ankles, non-consensual

contact with lips from a time machine - but
the time traveler can only pretend that they've gone
anywhere before today. Yesterdays don't want
eulogies from you. They won't accept nostalgia's

love letters. They find them creepy, toss them
into the pile with all the other unopened
envelopes. You never write to yesterday,
but I constantly pen frivolous platitudes,

waste money on stamps, dry out my tongue
sealing the paper grin, and send every
plaintive poem to a property that I haven't
laid my eyes on, let alone my feet, in nearly

a decade. Because the cabin never was for
the hopeless romantic. It was built, with
two other cabins, by my grandfather, with
hands that resisted age, so it stopped his heart

instead. It was built for board games, bike
rides, nature walks and small talk in a yellow
kitchen. Built for reunions, friends, family
escapes - not from heartbreak, but from

ladders and skyscrapers. My mother and
uncles and aunt survived growth spurts here.
My grandparents and great-uncles and
great-aunts are honored with plaques nailed

to tree trunks here. My uncle took his tools
and gutted everything here, ripped rotten
entrails from splintered bowels, made
overambition into a cocktail, drank it

to keep his imagination alive. This place is six
layered archaeological levels of love, but the kin
kind, not the romantic kind. So the hopeless
romantic is stranded in the forest without

a map, a canteen, or a way forward. They sit
and they simmer and wait for the heat of the
moments that have already moved on to dispel
in the cold chill of the wilderness. And so

we move on as well. You and me, weaving
together in suburbia and letting the long-awaited
rain wash over our intertwined souls. We settle
in our own condominium, watch honeycomb

sunsets drip into the bay like melted wax, collect
mementos of old haunts and stow them away for
safekeeping, knowing that otherwise, all they
really would do is haunt us. There is no cabin

for the hopeless romantic. Romance lives
without it, thrives even sans self-imposed exile.
In our tiny space, we indulge in sweetness,
but we sip and savor it in our own bed. We

carry each other over thresholds unmarked
by broken bark or wasp nests, moss or shade,
father's footsteps or ancestor's airy laugh.
History should not be repeated, regardless

of the context or connotation. And I leave
my personal history, my memories, to you.
And we carry each other. Without woods and
without words, we carry each other.