We opened up chairs and sat by the motorway. The sound of the cars rushing passed were like crashing waves. We clinked beer bottles. I told you secrets. You locked them away in the vault of your heart. You found words to say more powerful than the winds and it rearranged the thoughts in my head. We sipped the beer together, tipping our bottles up to the moon.
Sometimes, a silence would sit between us and I needn't look because I knew the look on your face. Content. All the pieces of the jigsaw put together. Serene. At one with the moonlight. All of this, despite the disease that had stolen a place in your body. I offered reassurances, as I always did but lately, they seemed to rush away with the passing cars, at top speeds and far from us. Sentiments of belief and hope, disappearing further down the motorway.
Our spot, a spot we had occupied since we were mere adolescents, had a mark of our existence that I prayed would stay there forever. It was on the ground underneath our chairs. Each leg had caused an indent and it became the beacon we looked for when coming here. Like writing your name in wet cement.
Sometimes, we would talk of nothing. Sometimes, we spoke of everything. The stars above spelt out the answers to our problems, we spoke of them so much. And I liked looking up and seeing them spread out across the night sky, reminding me of all that we had solved. And they never followed us home. They remained up there, embedded with all of the world's problems.
Home for us both was close together and yet it was these nights that I embraced. Both of us with families where the children were "no longer children but will always be children". We laughed at that, beer in our bellies, smiles on our faces, love in our lives. How simple it was. We would just know when it was time. Front doors opening at the same time. Slipping jumpers over our heads to fight away the cold.
The cold.
I kissed you on the forehead, wishing it were still warm but the cold was harsh on my lips. The sound of the rushing cars replaced by the faint sobs of grief, of longing, of pain, of regret. We sent you under and closed up the hole. Petals by my feet. Tissues in my hand. So much hurt in my heart. The night would come and I would still go. Opening up both chairs. Watching the cars. Feeling the urge to step in between them. Crash into me. Carry me away.
But then your voice would find its way to me. Carried by the wind from a far away place. And it would release the pain the way medicine would, slowly, throughout my soul. And your voice would be instructions to me, to march on, keep time behind me, watch the life and death of leaves, pull out the weeds in the flower beds, light fires under a starlit sky, hug the children often, ask new questions, find meaning in the rolling countryside hills and imagine a life worth living.
Head up, I would look for you, the cold biting at my face, my cheeks, the tip of my nose, my forehead. I would reach out. Plead with the torn skies. Come down from there! Tears like rain. The world would swallow up my cries, silence my strained voice, buckle my legs until I hit the floor. There was never a reply. In the end, the Earth will continue to rotate as it should, and you will remain removed of it as it were written. So I pound the pavement, breaking skin and shedding blood. Searching for answers in the cracks beneath me, finding only scars.
Back in the chair. A single figure. Sipping the beer. There you go. It's what you wanted. To continue on, habitual acts with robotic emotion. Live another day. With you to exist only in memory. Not sat beside me. No. But forever inside of me.
