I still go back there in my dreams, see every inch of it,
feel every vibration, smell the scents that struck me on my first visit,
compounded by those moments later, the good and the sad one, her scent mingling
with the odors that have accumulated, until they all swirl in my head in my
memory.
In some ways, I am the ghost she senses, against whom she sometimes
locked and unlocked the doors, a spirit that can no longer be there in the
flesh, so must linger in the air outside, or down the block or in the air above
the nearby river, condemned to remain and yet be excluded, imprisoned by my
memories of what happened there, the breakfast vegetables, the afternoon
delight, the glasses of wine seated on her couch.
Other men (perhaps better men) have come there, of course, spirits
I felt each time I came and went, and often imagined during those late night texts,
each of us finding pleasure in ourselves at a distance.
She calls it a place of windows, as it is, but feels like a
fortress to me, where she – that amazing figure from some old fairy tale, let
down her hair long enough for me to climb into her life, her arms, her bed,
which I repeat in memory long after I ceased being welcome in the flesh.
This is where her heart resides, beating fast when she is
afraid, perpetually making her aware of loves gained and loves lost, a sunny
world by day, but mysterious at night, especially with all those icons of her
life, her paintings on the walls, books of her heroes, (mine and others), and
the window in the kitchen where she perches bird-like when she smokes.
It is a place I can see even with my eyes closed, the long
rooms, and where we sat during those few times I was welcome, where we kissed
on the couch, and later made love (once successfully) on her bed, my fingers
still feeling the special places, the tender places and my mouth still tastes
them as well.
The ache of it still clings to me even as it will long after
she has departed it, when the reality no longer matches what I remember, and I
cling to the memory because it is the only thing that is real, what I feel when
stirring in my sleep, what I see when I close my eyes, what I taste – the wine,
the woman and without doubt the song.
I will still remember her naked shape sprawled beside me, and
will feel my fingers tingling from that touch long, long gone and perhaps she’s
forgotten, that nakedness I first saw with the photographs she sent (and I kept
and still cling to when all else has faded away).
I will dream, too, of her life spent here long after she’s
ceased spending here, the troubled wakings, the rushed mid-mornings to get to
work, the luxurious (and sometimes intensely lonely) evenings, shared, and
sometimes greedily kept for herself, the lovemaking (imagined and experienced),
the self-love when alone, the flow of her life that like the nearby river is
never the same, yet always is, new things evolving into past experience as she
gets on with her life.
And yet, I imagine there are things that have happened here
that never happened before and never will again, treasured moments, maybe even
treasured people whose memory she carries away with her the way I carry away my
memories of her, to which I revisit time and again in my dreams, unreal, yet an
absolute reality, full of pain of loss because they were once so full of joy,
the touch and being touched, the kiss and being kissed, the feel of it all pressed
against me, forever present and forever gone, the way all ghost stories are.
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