Traces Remain
Your
fingers trace Glory. They trace the route they have traced many times before.
You’ve traced her, through the printed petals on her summer shawl, through the
plushness of her wedding dress, through the sheen of her satin negligee;
through nothing. Your touch lasts for only the moment when fingers meet her,
before it is chased away by the youth in her skin. Nothing is forever. The
touch, tonight, feels fabricated, the coolness where there used to be warmth
makes you linger in what used to be. You used to long for the warmth of her
breast once it had left your chest and the chill of her cold shoulders rung in its
cruel wake, but now you long even for the dampened thrill of that chill.
Tonight you
trace the route you traced in the first summer you found yourself alone under
the violet tapers of your darkened sky and the pearl smirk of the crescent moon,
in the long grass of a perfectly lonely shred of shore, the one you thought
that no one else knew, the one that you knew would erode away to nothing before
you ever made it back there again.
Silk
beneath your wrinkled fingertips makes you reminisce.
You saw
her, her navy mane made you think of the Atlantic abyss you sailed there on,
the darkness of its beauty, its secrets, its knowledge, all its power,
suspended in the nothing of the atmosphere. It waltzed in the wake of her
movements, it made the air swoon into a cool breeze that didn’t carry that
stench of sightseers and overworked air conditioners, nor the roar of the resorts
you always hated staying at because they weren’t the real Rio; they were too
safe to be real – you got on the plane to escape the WASPs not to sip Sangrias
with them – you wanted to experience the city with all its flaws, you wanted Brazil – you used to think imperfections
were what made things perfect.
Her face, as she came closer, was split by the
moonlight into contrasts. Her eyes glowed, they roared and you felt your heart
cower. Her face was heart shaped and her lips were full and her eyes were deep
and her cheek bones were high and pronounced and her slight nose gently split
these features you always thought were so close to perfection that they were to
linger eternally in your fatigued fantasises. She made you think of Shelley and
Byron and the thoughts made your body fall beyond the grass, beyond the sand,
beyond the sea. Beyond everything. And you liked falling; it was the absence of
all but one sensation that made you feel complete for the first time in your
life. You were just out of 6th form and your thoughts were anchored
in the words of your idols and you wanted to anchor a mind like yours one day but
that night you let your dreams drown to live for a moment, even if it was only
a moment. You were so bound in the naivety of Romantic ideals that you could
not comprehend the thought that the beauty of her, of that place, wasn’t
infinite; you didn’t understand why something you loved so much wouldn’t last
forever.
She
didn’t introduce herself and neither did you, introductions were not needed,
your words your thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, remained unspoken. Murmurs
would only corrupt the moment. She came to your side in silence; she turned her
body towards you. She was naked beneath the moons’ veil now casting over her
body and while your eyes darted across what you were sure was a dream her eyes,
jaded at the altar months later, but on that night amber, stayed, almost in
ambush, on your face. Eventually, once you had seen all there was to see, you were
met by that gaze that had been lying in wait for your return. She made you feel
empty, and the feeling was wonderful. It was not an emptiness put there by fear
or by loss, but one that only ever surfaces in the light of complete awe. You
were at such a loss as her lips rushed to yours and your hands rushed to touch
her before she, like the beach, like your dreams, faded.
But she
did fade. She spoke, you spoke, your love shrunk and every syllable you shared
with each other ruined the connection you had. You found out who she was and
you didn’t like knowing. You wanted her to be forever silent, the eternal
enigma, the mistress, so beautiful and so free she was moonlight incarnate. She
was supposed to be the muse that drove your pen to paper, a figure to be
discussed in classrooms, in lectures, across the world long after your time had
come, you wanted to share your legacy with her. But you never became the poet,
you never became anything and Shelley rots in a cardboard box in an oak armoire
across the room. Your fingers trace across the silk sheets where she used to
lie. You cling to the vision of her on that beach. You don’t want to remember
the mane as ashen or thinning or fraying, you want to remember the hour glass
figure when it was new; you don’t want to remember that the glass warped and
splintered and cracked, you want to remember her in the light and dark of the nights’
Rio, not the greyed shades of London daybreak. You don’t want to remember her
when she fell apart, but you want to remember that she’s not there for you to
trace even more.
You went
to scatter her ashes today at your stretch of beach; it wasn’t there and the
sand of the shore had become thick clumps of tar beneath your callused heels.
The horizon used to be beautifully bare, but now there’s an oil rig and a
luxury cruiser side by side, you could see them bleeding darkness into the
water; the black veneer eked, eel-like, across the surface. It was so quiet;
the only sound the dying rasps of the shore as a blackened sea lapped at it
with a bloated tongue. But you could see them out there, if you looked hard,
when you pushed the tears from your eyes. You could see their shapes, there was
a couple on the deck, and they were alone there, but you could see a party
inside, green strobes gushing from the windows, crimson sunset slumping into
the sea behind it. You were unsure of what to do, where to start, and all the
time the urn was becoming heavier in your arms. You didn’t see a problem with scattering
her when you got up this morning, but as you stood there, as you saw the
wonders she and you remembered weakened by the world you were to naïve to
believe would never find this shore, it didn’t feel like a scattering, it felt
like you were going to throw her away. It felt wrong.
She sits
now, in the passenger seat of your car. You can’t bring yourself to scatter her
anywhere because you know there is nowhere else she’d want to be scattered. And
so you sit, alone, on the sheets. Your heart hurts, you temples throb, you’re
drowsy, you feel yourself start to smile as you look across at the empty bottle
of Aspirin in your heavy hand. You are crying silently, you feel the tears
teeter on your eyelashes like the dew you used to feel under your toes in the
morning, before they streak across a face so hollow and haggard you do not care
to know it anymore. You’re body heaves with spasms of sadness, you feel
yourself going, but you’re still smiling. Your fingers are still tracing her
echoing form; you feel colder; the sheet feels warmer and there’s a weight at
your side. She could be with you, but you can’t be sure, you can’t turn your
head to see. But you don’t want to, just in case she isn’t there.
Your
heart’s not going as fast as it was a minute ago, your mind’s slowing, your
eyes close, and still there’s the beach, and the moon, and the sea and it all
feels so euphoric. And the feeling’s starting to end, and everything's going dark. It's all fading, once again.
