Carol Cabrera
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Timing

9/16/2015

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I don’t know the moment I realized it was true. I think it was a gradual understanding rather than a click of a switch: I was not a girl he wanted to dance with or plan the future with. I was not a girl he wanted to make happy with surprises or flowers or sweets or wine. Instead, I was a girl he dined with to bide away the lonely hours. I was a girl he kept tucked away in the shadows, in the places where I could not harm or even touch the things that were actually important to him.


Our first time was in a bustling city, where I could hear alcohol singing and shouting just outside our window. We were friends, splitting the hotel room, trying to save money. Later, I would blame that first encounter on the tequila I had consumed that evening. He would blame it on my painfully obvious loneliness.


A year into our relationship we were out with a group of his friends and I was cold. I asked to borrow his sweatshirt. He smiled, looked uncomfortable and, as politely as he could, said no.


“I’m sorry,” he said later.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I said, even though I wasn’t.


Years have passed since the end. As a reader, I sometimes look back on his particular chapter in the text of my life, trying to analyze it, searching for the themes that maybe I was supposed to pick up somewhere along the line that may have been blurry through all the hurt.


I sometimes wonder if there is something I could have done differently. I look for things to blame: I was young, he was fickle, our drunken beginning, our fragile friendship. But maybe there is nothing I could have done. Maybe those years were simply not the season for our successful relationship.


It is a shame that time has never been a friend of mine. I always run out of it or am impatient with it when it is excessive. In my adult life, it has dawned on me that perhaps I should have been more careful to befriend her--so much of love is simply right timing.
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    Carol Cabrera

    The goal: Release the inner creator. The means: Write 365 words a day in any genre (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, theatre) for 365 days and make the work public. 

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  • Making
    • Theatre Projects >
      • Agila (2017)
      • Halo Halo (2017)
      • Stories of the Sun Cafe (2017)
      • Colored (2018)
    • The Creation Trade (ongoing)
    • Portraiture >
      • Skyler (2015)
      • Cleo (2015)
      • Sophia (2015)
      • Karen (2015)
      • Dio (2016)
      • Chivonne (2016)
      • Isabella (2016)
      • Gordon & Erika Get Married (2017)
      • Titus (2017)
    • 365 Writing Project (2015)
    • Photo Series >
      • Natural Inversions (2015)
      • City (2015)
      • Music Photography (Ongoing)
      • Uganda, in 80 Portraits (2016)
    • Si Malakas at Si Maganda >
      • The Journey
      • The Artwork
      • The Team
      • The Photos >
        • March 18th: 4th Grade Critique Group at Explorer Elementary School
        • March 18th: Community Gathering at Charity Wings Art & Crafts Center
        • March 13th: Community Gathering at Cabrera House
      • The Media
      • The Community
    • Poetry >
      • closing performance
      • zodiac lovers
    • Music (Ongoing)
    • Loving v. Virginia (Ongoing)
    • Rice Not Bullets >
      • Rice Not Bullets: Response #1
      • Rice Not Bullets: Response #2
      • Rice Not Bullets: Response #3
    • Watercolor Experiments
  • Learning
    • High Tech High GSE
    • New York University
  • Teaching