(I wanted you out, I wanted my veins clean, wanted every cell in this skin new, I went to the ends of the earth and here you are, still, and I cannot be angry for it. I carry you now as a heavy treasure in my side, such is life.
We put our clothes in a pile and jumped naked off the dock in the light of the full moon. I feel a happiness in my very soul now, if you remain in this blood, at least I know you won’t be sorry.)
I wake early, well before the alarm. Don't know why I set it, the sun is a better start to any morning. A cool current of air moves in from the balcony, whispering of stability and safety.
Safety.
Make my way through an old part of town, a royal castle heavysat at the horizon, seagulls whispering of the proximity to an ocean. In the distant, on another island, lies the church that was once my beacon home, but it's been so many years now, although some things never feel like too long ago.
Some people don't either.
The boat makes its way through the archipelago, out to the open sea. Three hours to an island at the ends of the earth, she laughs when you ask if there is Wi-Fi to work. Your doctor writes to check in on you and you have nothing to say but smiles, you are nothing now but poetry, in your snail shell lies only bathing suits that haven't dried yet, you've worked so hard to find the meaning of life only to realize it was all
so
simple.
Move on to another borough, another way to reach water with your deep held breath. Remember how two weeks ago she said fall is here and you shivered, now the sunshine is all summer, is all flushed cheeks and neglected duties. Goodbyes don’t get easier just because you’ve survived them before.
This will all end in tears, you whisper to yourself in the solitary quiet moment of the transfer. Wonder at how many years can fit in a life. How many lives can fit in the years.
The city that once was your home glitters at your feet. You don’t know how to build a life that appears only once for a whole year.
I’m halfway across the park before I realize the key is missing from my hand, music pounding in my ears and the sweet ache of a run in my limbs. An ephemeral emptiness in my palm, a slowly creeping awareness of consequence. Stockholm lies in the periphery, all green grass and postcard views and whispers of what you should be missing.
For now you’re only missing a key.
Perhaps that’s the message.
By the time you recover it, hours later, and the tears arrive in a surprise, he has to hold you for them to subside. You haven’t the composure to hide your inner workings. Explain, there is only perfection.
He takes you to the water because it is the thing that always heals you, and you only briefly have time to think how long a year. Thank goodness you cannot dwell on it.
You take the wrong subway line to your next destination.
You arrive in the last town you called home on a sunny Sunday afternoon, roll into the central station flags waving and stately buildings on parade. You forget yourself.
The subways are the same as before, a muscle memory sits in your spine, sputtering back into action and almost remembering. You ride the bus past the house of a man you once thought you might care for. Nothing stirs. In the late evening, you go back to the dock for another swim, nothing else has ever mattered, the sun doesn’t set over Stockholm because it is summer yet, because it is alive yet, you wonder if you could live here when November comes but the question is irrelevant. He stays longer than intended. When your heart is heavy, you return to those who love even your darkest corners.
In the morning, I pack my swimsuit into a purse. You never know. It sounds like a metaphor,
but maybe it’s just an itch to scratch.
Another day, another sorrowful goodbye. I drag my heavy suitcase toward the bus, only to run into a man who loved me once. He drives me to the train station. I say, tell me everything that is new with you in seven minutes, but we don’t know which words are the right ones. I say, next year we will make more time. The spaces in between are eons.
In the early afternoon, the bride lost her words to say I do, but recovered later for a chaste kiss. The newly minted husband said she is the most impressive person he knows. Your old accent creeps back into the fold, but none of your old wounds open, none of the aches remind themselves in your bones. At the end of the night, just before the briefly dark August night turns, I swam out into the lake. Behind me, the twinkling lights of the dance floor, ahead only dark waves and bright stars. I don’t remember what was whispered into that moment, but I know I smiled despite myself. I know each wave was washed in gratitude.
It is possible to feel joy,
and only joy.
A week passes in buses and trains, in dragging your suitcase through a meandering landscape of nostalgia. Babies are born, children grow up, the cities where you once were young feel distant underneath your feet. Do you remember how big that hill was when we were kids? You remember everything.
But the distance doesn't ache in your chest like it used to do. The awkward tangle of how your limbs both fit and don't doesn't chafe like it once did, like it always did, like it cut slivers into your skin and you returned home bleeding in silence. Now you simply drink it in, rejoice in the late night conversations, the rainy day skinny dipping, the champagne soaked retreats with people who've known you in so many of the lives you've lived so far. You are all love and very little pain, is this what peace is? In the short silences just before you sleep, poetry whispers itself across your brow. You've been looking for answers in every corner of the world only to find that it makes itself within you.
You hold on tight to the idea. Tight like a baby bird. Tight like being soft takes more strength than the fighting you have left behind. You hold on like it's love.
