19 - Again

“I said I would.”

There is more trust now that the dark has been named, mutually, the two of us staring as if it was not ourselves, the thing standing now where everything else used to, like the acceptance of someone else’s friend, like the person that has found an accidental obsequious way between us into that line where we all stand, wait, and then when it is our turn, depart. I have no neck left for hanging. I say it. It sounds like how I look at her when she says 'whatever' and I don’t say anything.

It is a longing like a shark. I would hold her close like a stranger now, save her like I never knew her, like we were meeting again. I feel so empty. In time, we are dancing like angels on eons and I pointing at a life we left, the two of us, our bodies down there bereft of us.

Each time I would take it all back. I know the pain as this wicked mooring torn free to damn me on the rocks, or with this new pilot seek that old sea I left to find her. You are not come full circle in death. You are not reborn in whispers and in the apathy of your children. You are not come again.

She leaves the key. Every little bit, every joy I could not share with her because that joy was her. Every uneasy sight, every mild unpleasantness that were her gifts to me like any necklace, any foot rub. I am redefined and that is my vengeance. I am returned through a mirror once looked through as a child. I take my own hand as I should, knowing I am myself. What things are surrendered. What hopes so thinly sewn.

There is no abbreviation in leaving, no warm window with a smile, a tear and a wave. There is a look of so much pain. There is the ruination of a thing that will always be a ruin come healing and love back to each our separate and sheltered hearts. I will drink tea there and love her and when I say that I love her more she will smile, but she will always feel the ruins underneath.