I am walking.
It is summer.
The light today is muted, bleached sun, casting shadows onto the warm city pavement.
The colors: vibrant, despite the mellow light.
I am carrying something...heavy. Something small. A thing so tight and deadly-feeling, it cannot even be mentioned or named. But it screams, deep in my gut.
My stomach seems so tight, it will surely fling itself: catapolting up my throat and out of my mouth, to lie there, dieing on the pavement. It is so heavy, so tight, so...unfinished.
It screams, but is muffled, deep in my belly. Mute and knowing no understanding of words. But this constant repeating:
This is not finished.
Where have you gone?
I open my eyes a bit more, finally, and become aware of the colors all around me; the mmildness of the weather; the soft heat and brilliance of the soft light.
And suddenly it is almost as if I am back in Europe.
It was not so different then. Was it?
I carried something there: my fears. My fear of strangers, of myself, of having to learn on my toes, of learning how to breathe in any situation.
I carried fears there, too. And hurts. Yes.
Buut they were wrapped in cellophaine. Hidden in my pockets, or the corners of my shoes, in the tight up-binding of my hair, in the pack I carried, my shoulders. In the way I drew in breath.
But here...it hurts. This is something more drastic. Something more dangerous. Something far more close to home.
Like I could die at any moment, if I stop too long to breathe you in. The loss of you in.
I choke, and let in only just enough to swallow and go on.
I am surprised at my feet: they take another step. And another. And another.
But I am not going anywhere.
And still the drumming of my heart echoes in me:
This is not finished, yet.
We are not finished yet.
This is not over yet.
Where have you gone? Why won't you see me?
Am I nothing more than echoes to you now?
My feet move slowly, steadily forward, but I live stagnant: unable to move forward without some conclusion, some explination of what had happened.
This has is not finished.
When will you finish it?
This burden inside me grows heavier, like lead, like a walnut, like woven promises that mean nothing but will not unwind or die. It screams without a voice and explodes in me every moment-- reborn again and again in it's distruction.
How can I move forward with this heaviness in me? How can I bretahe when taking in breath makes me gasp for air and sob with grieving.
No death could hurt as much as this anger. This distance. This denile of things I believed to be true.
I am here. I exist. Is it not so?
And still it echoes: THIS IS NOT OVER.
Please, God. Let this be over.
I mumble Shakespeare to myself and move like one in dreams-- moving forward to findd myself where I left from. Slowly. Numbing. But always...
Where can I go?
With every silver car that passes, I turn my head to follow, to see if it might be you:
Can I catch one last glimpse?
Is the license plate Blue? If I look past the bright reflection on the wind shield, will I see your hair? The color of your eyes? The glasses you alwways wear? The look on your face when you are focused?
I remember your eyes. Always, your eyes.
Your smell was always warm: salt and sea, and sweetness. Intoxicating. I memorized it, and your every feature. But I cannot smell it now. Nothing remembered.
The way you stand, the way you sleep: only flashes of memory that shift in the waking hours.
I can remember that this is nothing: say it to myself: just keep moving...
I would be full of happy and content-- finding my own way, my own path, a new adventure. NEW ADVENTURES.
But the heaviness continues and pulls in me, screaming, keeping me from breathing:
This is not over yet.
I need a resolution. If only to say goodbye. Forever.
And yet I wonder, would that ever truly be enough?
That last words we spoke were foreign, on the phone. Half-screaming. And then a silence so vast I think I will surely go deaf...
Now there is nothing. And that is worse.
I know I am alone: I look up, and open my eyes to the blinding day, and I can see-- there is only me. Only me inside. The voices that speak are only echoes of things that once were, or things unsaid, imagined, that never were at all.
But there is an aching, more real than the memory of you.
And something inside me, that refuses:
This is not over.
