But oh my love, though our bodies may be parted...
Exposition: She laughs. Mouth to sky, head on shoulders her face beams, first with pink hues, then with a stew-like redness. Her face. Hers was a face ruined by the preponderance of maroon ringlets in her hair. The color of grainy rust, the pigmentation of dog-house roofs, the alleged blush of Mars. They tousle and splash, taking excess notice. Too much has been destroyed about Martha - the funnel surety of her jaws that was a matron's, the position of her washed out bleak eyes set shallowly beneath the gaping ridges of her brow, the puzzling nose that comes across snubbed at a distance but pronounced up close - that even her other redeeming features, which standards of loveliness scantily tolerate, could not keep up. Funny how reckless a solitary point could be. Irreducible.
Recollection: Martha dashed and I followed. Eradicated shops now flashed in an transient flair over to that last stretch of sparsely inhabited street; past Dog Care and Products where little mutts shriek hardened yowls, past Velvet Inhibitions where Old man Joe hides a flustered pain. She jumped. I ducked. We took for this infinitesimal track that Martha and I, for the past few years that we have known each other, made through boredom and stymied attempts at fumbling our equally pubescent frames. We had the whole town mapped out: first, up the stone steps of Mr. Seagram’s house in which a gigantic mast protrudes an unfurled Star and Stripes, then a guarded hop at Daza’s inapt rhododendron flora which were surrounded by badlands of bushes. After that, we take a focused sprint on the vigilant road that would finally lead us to the Arcades. Martha was winded but her stern eyes stayed firmly towards the remote finish line. I was in the fringes of catching up to her when she grappled my rhythmically flailing arms, tugging me to her place. I tried to wrench myself free but find that I could not, would not, for the sweet touch of unconscious skin deters me to do so. For hearts so touched, so pierced, so lost. Amongst the flurry of unbuttoned shirts (hers and mine) and the straggle of vine-like tresses (I was nearly bald), we wrestled while coursing through the streets, limbs locked in impossible knots, chests raised ripe for rupture, like turbulent wild horses nipping, stomping, butting our way through the jagged tarmac fields. Not one of us lead one another and I knew then that this doppelganger of a girl, this misery of mine who looks like a brute but loves like a nurse was to be, some incalculable years later, one of my biggest regrets; that she would be renewed of my appeal whilst I was left putrefied would be the start of my continuous crimson pain.
On to now. Seven Martha-less years have passed and still I find myself running my memorized, trammeled hands on her silhouetted image. The once pleasant ache of lost sweethearts has now turned to a moldy numbness not even worthy of a word, let alone a serenade. I know it’s not fair to position one past darling in lieu of the unrequited recent but L, I just don’t have anything to go from you. Regardless of how deep and far I grasp for visions of our trysts you seem to be more of a shadow as the days go by, even more than Martha. Is this a sign that I maybe falling out to my only true love? Dear god, I hope not. Where would I be if there was no you?
I don’t know. Maybe this is temporary. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll find myself the same usual fool. It’s just that I don’t want fabrication - not what my mind falsely conjures of you to be for it suits too freely to my liking, no matter how lovely and sweet and caring you may appear. I want the real you. Flesh, bone and true. I’m up for disappointment. I care that much.
Little by little the solace from my prose is wearing thin. Soon it may not be enough to mollify my heart of you but I’ll manage. And even though our bodies may be parted by the ocean swells of the Atlantic, though our skin may never touch skin, give me, just this once, the rightful delusion (for isn’t Delusion nothing but hallucinated Hope) that we are in step, that I have somehow tremulously stirred something, even the least, in you the way you did to me.
This is goodbye again. If ever my wild feeling is right, just look for me, as the song goes, with the sun-bright sparrow and I will devotedly come on the breath of the wind, my L, my love.