gone baby gone
"10/23"
He whispers another language to himself in the empty house wondering if the accent is precise enough; wondering if he is good enough. He looks up from his list of irregular verbs at his kitchen table in his kitchenette in his place and stirs quietly in his chair. What he's thinking I may never know, but I can recognize the content in his face and the peace of his jawline. He doesn't know that I am watching him; or maybe he does. Perked erect in his bed, head cocked like a guard dog watching for- nothing in particular. Just grabbing at whatever I can get, not bothering to push away a smokey slice of my hair in fear of a bed springs squeak and the quick stiffen of his shoulders as he turns right to peer in my direction.
There are no matters waiting to be discussed between us anymore, they are obsolete in the satisfaction of eye contact. My head sings one of his songs, and I can smell his cologne and smoke on me like a heavy hand, and still within my eyeline the flex of his forearm turning a page forward. He switches gears and stands, pacing and pushing through French to English, engrossed in a verb that's conjugation must be taunting him; the slippery sweet language of a thousand better or worse romantics he practices.
I pop to the left in case he glances, for sure that this time will mean the end of my spying and instead I think of a night before this, one much like the first, before we stopped remembering who and what we were and started forgetting the why, and that it was the most important. A night of a cold walk and my hands in my pockets and the unknowing of where the cloudless sky would take me, but wanting to go there anyway. A night in a town- in a city not my own where the streets twist in a pattern I have yet to recognize, but his confident stride at my side, and laughter, breaking into the night air like an egg, like a smokey puff of joy is enough to wish we could just get lost in these city's streets for a few more minutes of incoherent bliss. A walk like we're the last two people in the world and the stories we tell are the histories of our generation, and as loudly as we let them slip into the almost November air we too grip them close. The fear of forgetting, the fear of a line not written because of lack of pen and paper, and the fear of pandemic dyslexia and the burning of the classics shivers us deeper into the down of our jackets.
He lists bars, rattling them off like a restaurants specials and asks me where I'd like to go. Where I want to go I already am, already been, the rest are simply the details of the background. So...I tell him I dont care, because I don't. Next time I might have preferences- this bar or that restaurant, but for now it's just the bumping of his shoulder to mine as we walk, the place I want to be.
So we end up with sugary drinks and beer at someone elses regular bar, harassed by not Billy Joel but some other piano man. I fill my head with the music and our jeers, the alcohol loosening lips and sinking ships. The room picks up, we bump knees, order more drinks. He looks at me leaning into the back of the chair, tapping his foot and ash, eyes slightly squinting from his smile, and this, this face, this moment is mine and I know I'll write this line. This will be my present for when times are not as good, and we try and mama cried and pleading denied. This, this moment of him at arms length from me, and he gently bumps his head forward and I can hear his foot tapping under the table and knee lifting and he knows it's Johnny Cash before the piano player has even decided to continue. Walk the line, it will be barely memorable to any other person in the bar, our waitress will look at me from behind a rack of stools and think that Im way too drunk to get home, but the buzzy look in my face is simply the recognition that the ghost of him that had haunted is warm and skin and hands and lips in front of me, and because you're mine, I walk the line.
He whispers another language to himself in the empty house wondering if the accent is precise enough; wondering if he is good enough. He looks up from his list of irregular verbs at his kitchen table in his kitchenette in his place and stirs quietly in his chair. What he's thinking I may never know, but I can recognize the content in his face and the peace of his jawline. He doesn't know that I am watching him; or maybe he does. Perked erect in his bed, head cocked like a guard dog watching for- nothing in particular. Just grabbing at whatever I can get, not bothering to push away a smokey slice of my hair in fear of a bed springs squeak and the quick stiffen of his shoulders as he turns right to peer in my direction.
There are no matters waiting to be discussed between us anymore, they are obsolete in the satisfaction of eye contact. My head sings one of his songs, and I can smell his cologne and smoke on me like a heavy hand, and still within my eyeline the flex of his forearm turning a page forward. He switches gears and stands, pacing and pushing through French to English, engrossed in a verb that's conjugation must be taunting him; the slippery sweet language of a thousand better or worse romantics he practices.
I pop to the left in case he glances, for sure that this time will mean the end of my spying and instead I think of a night before this, one much like the first, before we stopped remembering who and what we were and started forgetting the why, and that it was the most important. A night of a cold walk and my hands in my pockets and the unknowing of where the cloudless sky would take me, but wanting to go there anyway. A night in a town- in a city not my own where the streets twist in a pattern I have yet to recognize, but his confident stride at my side, and laughter, breaking into the night air like an egg, like a smokey puff of joy is enough to wish we could just get lost in these city's streets for a few more minutes of incoherent bliss. A walk like we're the last two people in the world and the stories we tell are the histories of our generation, and as loudly as we let them slip into the almost November air we too grip them close. The fear of forgetting, the fear of a line not written because of lack of pen and paper, and the fear of pandemic dyslexia and the burning of the classics shivers us deeper into the down of our jackets.
He lists bars, rattling them off like a restaurants specials and asks me where I'd like to go. Where I want to go I already am, already been, the rest are simply the details of the background. So...I tell him I dont care, because I don't. Next time I might have preferences- this bar or that restaurant, but for now it's just the bumping of his shoulder to mine as we walk, the place I want to be.
So we end up with sugary drinks and beer at someone elses regular bar, harassed by not Billy Joel but some other piano man. I fill my head with the music and our jeers, the alcohol loosening lips and sinking ships. The room picks up, we bump knees, order more drinks. He looks at me leaning into the back of the chair, tapping his foot and ash, eyes slightly squinting from his smile, and this, this face, this moment is mine and I know I'll write this line. This will be my present for when times are not as good, and we try and mama cried and pleading denied. This, this moment of him at arms length from me, and he gently bumps his head forward and I can hear his foot tapping under the table and knee lifting and he knows it's Johnny Cash before the piano player has even decided to continue. Walk the line, it will be barely memorable to any other person in the bar, our waitress will look at me from behind a rack of stools and think that Im way too drunk to get home, but the buzzy look in my face is simply the recognition that the ghost of him that had haunted is warm and skin and hands and lips in front of me, and because you're mine, I walk the line.