old letter from old times.

A love letter of sorts, of the sort that is not really a love letter at all, all in aid

of a series of scenes that played out

over a thousand years ago now..

between you, and me.

You may not remember them.

In a sentence, we marked a point on a map of the province and went there. Cliché, I know, so maybe just that one word explains the whole stupid thing better than I will anyway.. A great beautiful stupid cliché.

 Maybe it was your red American car. And the Neutral Milk Hotel tape.  And the blue bunny you bought me for two measly quarters at that yard sale, walking through the green wet ditch to get to it, in clinging mid-morning mist. I remember you so clearly in that instant and in my mind you won’t have changed at all even though it’s been a thousand years since then.

So cocky in your cap, your wired stomach so taut through your favourite threadbare shirt. So pleased you were to be the first ones there (you loved yard sales more than poker), and so pleased with this blue rabbit that I named Keats because you love his poetry, that later after my dad had died, I carried around Europe, and helped by posting the postcards this blue Keats sent you, detailing his adventures with Rosemary the faerie, while you were all the while at home, courting that beguiling elfin-faced girl with the braces.

(You might not remember the postcards from a stupid blue rabbit named after a sappy poet-hero of yours.)

Next. Back on our mystery tour: a roadside shop with oddities bits of glass smurfs Christmas decorations and a violin all suspended from the dwarf-height ceiling. And a giant stone chimney outside the front door where you could make a great echo if you bellowed.  And in anticipation of arriving at this town so called Atlas, two bottles of wine warming below your back seat.

And then there was the town of murals. On every square drab surface this town had painted their history. Ladies in cinch waisted gowns and fashionable ruffles, little hats perched. Parasols. Men with moustaches, horse and cart. We drove around that town for maybe an hour.

I liked the grave brick mansions with their spiny wrought iron gates, houses set so high on their tiny plots to see out to the great lake. The one I’ve forgotten the name of now but knew until the decades crumbled around me.

I’ve been reading Henry Miller while listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club but I know it doesn’t help. Doesn’t soothe me. So I smoke to forget... but I remember anyway, and it just gets me more anxious.

And after the town of murals, we found that tiny lake, that had no sign and no sign of anyone else around, and that was that for the wine..

You had the white and I had the rose, and we lost our clothing I seem to remember, in the water, even though by then we hadn’t even kissed. That lake already felt heady against my shivering skin even before you accidentally brushed your arm against mine, but I don’t think you felt me shake.

And Atlas, oh grand destination! Well we forgot that place before we’d even passed the Atlas

    Farewells

         You

sign.  What a non-event. But I don’t think that was really what it was about.

I don’t remember where we first kissed, although I have this funny feeling; between a recollection and a dream, it might have been almost all the way in to your bed when we got home that night. I might be wrong, it all happened a long time away from now, you must remember..

And there was most definitely a cemetery. I just can’t say definitively if it was on this same trip.  I think it might have been another time altogether. We hardly knew each other this time. But as soon as your car pulled up my heart started ricocheting around inside my chest like a sparrow trapped in a chimney pipe. It’s a sick analogy I know, but one that best d escribes this particular feeling, let me tell you..

We shared a joint, and had an apple each. We walked around with our cameras but didn’t take any pictures. Sorry I didn’t. You photographed me.

I talked a lot but felt everything I was saying had it’s own balloon that would drift off with the meaning before the words even reached you. If anyone had been watching they would have laughed at such a ridiculous scene. Me with all my meanings floating off into ether.  Me trying desperately not to float off after them and telling myself to stop. Smiling. So. Much.  And you, delicate and hilarious and earnest and strong all at once, eating an apple. I didn’t even think it was possible. You said something to me but I was up the hill and I didn’t hear, but I think I did hear..

Nothing of note happened in the hours we were there but everything seemed to happen in the gap between those particular seconds. I almost reached out and took your hand that time, but I stopped myself. Everything I had built up for myself was falling over anyway, but I still didn’t reach out and take it. I just stood still and looked at the rising moon. And that was all.

You most likely won’t remember it.

And there is nothing left of that particular scene other than a blurry photo of a boy in silhouette with the sun laid out across the ground behind him; graves in foreground.  Probably best forgotten anyhow..

So that was all I needed to say in this love letter of sorts, of the sort that isn’t really a love letter at all, only a remembering of a series of scenes that played out over a thousand years ago now. Oh, that’s all except I never explained to you at the time why I like to go to cemeteries so much.

I like to go to them because I am still alive and I can, so every time it is a celebration.