The impossibility of letting go
Leave it behind, they say.
Leave behind his face, features unclear but topped by yellow hair, and a white t-shirt and arms swinging towards me.
Leave behind the fumbled running through the rain and a moment on a doorstep far away when lips met lips met lips met lips.
Leave behind the bus station, where his eyes met yours, reached out and touched yours, moist and holding, and all the world around you held its breath.
Get on the bus and leave it behind.
Leave behind the moments, the looks crossed now stuffed in weighty pockets, the smells that hang around your neck, the holding seconds, the green fields by the road to Waterford and him large and joyous beside you, the white round porcelain of bath time singing and sliding sheets that wrapped you both, the tube to a London suburb and him waiting on the platform, the first phone call where thousands upon thousands of tribal drums struck up a rhythm in your chest.
Leave them behind, they say, your frame is small, you cannot carry it all.
I take them all out, one by one, from all their hidden places, behind a certain song, or at the mention of midsummer, or inside the smell of an after shave you once spilled in your bag.
I take one last look and place them softly, gently, I leave them down and turn my face away.
I fly away.
And here I am, years later, a rainy day in Buenos Aires and I pass a shop you've never seen, and a song comes out. And the string pulls, connecting me to you and me and time long gone but here in a cramped car going south, your hand on my leg, our future before us all along a road that is shorter than we think.
And here, in a foreign bar, somebody speaks with your voice, the slow, wrangled drawl of you, and I am in the London rain with you again and we are still getting wet.
Leave behind his face, features unclear but topped by yellow hair, and a white t-shirt and arms swinging towards me.
Leave behind the fumbled running through the rain and a moment on a doorstep far away when lips met lips met lips met lips.
Leave behind the bus station, where his eyes met yours, reached out and touched yours, moist and holding, and all the world around you held its breath.
Get on the bus and leave it behind.
Leave behind the moments, the looks crossed now stuffed in weighty pockets, the smells that hang around your neck, the holding seconds, the green fields by the road to Waterford and him large and joyous beside you, the white round porcelain of bath time singing and sliding sheets that wrapped you both, the tube to a London suburb and him waiting on the platform, the first phone call where thousands upon thousands of tribal drums struck up a rhythm in your chest.
Leave them behind, they say, your frame is small, you cannot carry it all.
I take them all out, one by one, from all their hidden places, behind a certain song, or at the mention of midsummer, or inside the smell of an after shave you once spilled in your bag.
I take one last look and place them softly, gently, I leave them down and turn my face away.
I fly away.
And here I am, years later, a rainy day in Buenos Aires and I pass a shop you've never seen, and a song comes out. And the string pulls, connecting me to you and me and time long gone but here in a cramped car going south, your hand on my leg, our future before us all along a road that is shorter than we think.
And here, in a foreign bar, somebody speaks with your voice, the slow, wrangled drawl of you, and I am in the London rain with you again and we are still getting wet.
posted by fiona at 11:51 a.m.
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