My broken heart and my defective captive rope


 He was French Canadian but didn't speak French. He looked like a big shaggy wolf with eyes the colour of green sea glass and curly dark hair streaked with grey, like a wolf's mane. He had a big nose and a full lower lip that I always nipped at when I kissed him. He was a working man with the soul of a poet trapped in a crash test dummy and I fell head over heels the minute I laid eyes on him… I even said to myself stick a fork in me I'm done what is even the point to keep looking… He was my Lucinda Williams song come to life in the form of a 6'1" man who should have been a cowboy... or a trapper in the forest breaking the hearts of all the Indian girls he came in contact with, cos he sure broke mine.

I'm such a cliche falling for yet another settler boy.

This time my captive rope didn't work and he broke free…wolves are like that. It was like he prowled around the edge of my fire close enough to settle down near me, padding close enough to touch occasionally but just with the edge of my fingers as he brushed by me, forever wary and circling just out of reach.

He found the chink in my armour and easily broke inside, leisurely exploring every inch of my body with his calloused touch and mesmerizing my mind with the blues and other love songs. He waltzed into my heart like a thief in the night, picked it up and casually tossed it around like he owned it, and then like all settlers before him took zero responsibility for his thievery. And it was then I realized -- I can't do this and said I have to go away, wolf  -- you can't come back to my fire. But I can still feel him circling at the edge of the woods, his eyes on me, watching with amusement.

Falling in love in my 50s was something I didn't think would ever happen. And now I'm wounded and bruised and dazed and incoherent, warily watching for wolf eyes. What the hell happened? I guess the funnel of love never stops whirling you around and hurting you no matter how old you are.



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