soap

It had been a long day of mostly mindless reptition, keeping myself focused on textbooks and lazily scribbled class notes as I prepared for the next day’s exams.  Feeling tired and as confident about the material as I was ever likely to, I elected to take a shower to wind down and prepare for bed.

I stood for a while and breathed in the hot steam, letting the water run through my hair and over my closed eyes as I tried to empty my mind of the day’s drudgery.  I shook the water from my locks and reached for a bar of soap.  Someone must have gone shopping for themselves as the bar was brand new and light pink, with the familiar bird emblem embossed upon it.  With a long whiff of the perfumed scent, I felt something clutch at my insides and yank me away into the dark.

I found myself suddenly laying once more in her bed, her wavy, unkempt hair draped across my bare chest with her chin tucked gently against my neck.  I glanced to her nightstand - 3:00AM.  How many late, late nights did we spend this way? I ran my hand along her naked skin and felt her arch her back at my touch.

“I like watching you sleep.  It’s hard to keep my hands off you.  You look very touchable when you’re asleep.”  She always said such things to me in the quiet spaces in between morning and late night.  I smiled, and pulled her close, taking a deep breath.  There - that same scent that overwhelmed me in the shower.  It was all so very clear in my memory now.  That tiny bedroom in her apartment had such a distinctive, sweet, perfume smell that I had not smelled since we parted ways.  And now, it clouded my senses and dragged my against my will back to the dim yet recent past.

She worked late nights at a restaurant downtown.  Consequently, our meetings were nearly always hours after midnight, when I would normally be sleeping - but the electric anticipation of seeing her always helped me to stay awake.  On those humid, sweaty summer nights, I would step out of my car already wearing pajamas, and she would be on her back porch, and welcome me with a light kiss.

We would often go our separate ways when morning came.  She would usually head to her mother’s house, and myself back to my lonely little studio.  It was an obvious symbolism for how our connection would not last, as the passionate throes of the night before were always swept away by the first bright rays of the sun.

How cruel, that so simple a thing as a bar of soap would drag me back to that place.  Nothing else yet had instilled such strong pangs of regret about those times, nothing so strong as the scent of that pink bar - a scent that reminded me more of her than any number of photographs ever could.

I slowly came back to the present, the shower beginning to run lukewarm as I lowered the soap bar from my face.  I was grateful for the water flowing down my face that obscured any tears that had fallen, but I could still taste their salt upon my lips.

winter

The text message read that she was in town for the funeral of her boyfriend’s sister.  She says that under happier circumstances, she would have called.  Given our history, what happier circumstances could there be?  She had increased the frequency of her correspondence as of late and like the white powder snow that dusted the ground, each small message made me feel a little colder.  In no small part, it was because some part of me can’t help but stare into the smoldering ashes of what we shared many months ago, despite the scars that remain - the memory of the fire that burned there may never fade away.

Doubtless, however, it is largely due to how unjust it seems to me.  Why should the woman who dealt me perhaps the most emotional violence I have yet to experience make so much effort to keep in touch, when the woman who set my mind alight with excitement make not a single effort to do the same?  After the inevitable just-looking-for-a-friend admission, I of course assumed that she wanted to take things slowly - it would be foolish to assume that she did not at least have some yearning for me given the things that were done and said as we lay in each other’s arms that November night.

I was mistaken, however, and did not hear a single word from her lips for thirty long days, an entire month of the uncertainty that turns one stomach over because the answer is plainly obvious, yet unacceptable.  Despite the emotion between us, I did not even know that I would be able to accept her back into my life should she bring herself before me.  How could I ever look into winter-grey eyes the same way again, knowing that within them lay the capacity to leave me stranded like she did?

Such is the search for love.  Obviously such pursuits would be easier if one’s past never made those efforts to keep in touch, as often all we want to do is forget how beautiful it could have been and continue moving forward in our lives.  The proper, healthy attitude would be to take every experience for what they are worth, and cherish the joyful times each new paramour brings into one’s life despite what else they may leave.  Healthy, indeed - but by no means comfortable.  And I fear the painful what-else left behind in my heart is slowly turning it into a frozen mess.

No matter how tightly I pull on my scarf, I just can’t seem to get any warmer.

houses

The winter had finally arrived in full, icy breezes forcing me to abandon my habit of keeping the bedroom window open and lofting brown and yellow leaves onto the carpet.  With it came the holiday season and a welcome break from increasingly chaotic weeks as I geared up for my finals.  I had spent most of the nearly two weeks with her, at claustrophobic Atlanta parties to the top of granite mountains and the quiet spaces in between.  She confessed the resolution of her confusion to me while waiting for a flight to arrive and as I feared, I am not a part of her future.

As such things go, I have spent far too much time contemplating it all and getting wound up in the emotions that held me to her for these past few weeks.  Being honest with myself, I knew going into this that she had only recently ended the longest and most meaningful relationship she had ever been in.  To her credit, she never once tried to hide it - she was forthcoming in all respects and made it clear that she wasn’t trying to replace that connection.  Am I to blame, then?  Did I create the confusion she had grappled with by trying to be something she did not want?

Or perhaps the feelings are genuine, but she knows that rushing into something new would only trouble everyone involved; this is not a sentiment I would disagree with, as hard as it may be to accept.  Having been without meaningful, intimate companionship for so long, it is difficult to remember that I too was once freshly single and afraid to commit so soon after.

In any event, there is no one to blame.  As I have come to see in the smoking cinders of the past, some things are simply not meant to be.  Despite the furtive glances and bashful smiles, the quiet nights and the things that went unsaid as she placed herself in my arms, it all lacked the missing element of fate.  Maybe if we’d met a year from now, things would have been different - and not necessarily for the better.  But such as it is - the things that are meant to be always work out in the end.  My life overall has been far brighter since she became a part of it, and if I do not gain a lover, I am gifted a priceless friend instead.

Maybe on a cold, dark night some time from now she’ll hold me again.  Maybe we’ll have those same feelings, the kind that excite and frighten as they start to well up in our chest.  Maybe we’ll press our lips together and say those things that we can’t say to each other now.  But if that is not what’s fated to be - and even if I could do it all over - I know that I wouldn’t change a thing.

she

The winter weather (as is the usual for this state) had already begun to run off with the fleeting tones of autumn, and I woke up shivering from the cold.  The rain continued to fall, more of a reminder of the season than the downpour of the past days.  Ash-colored clouds draped me in a curtain of mist and seemed to darken the mood of everyone on campus, who walked in procession like Benedectine monks with their heads bowed under umbrellas.

My thoughts as of late had drifted off to she, perhaps because of the pangs of loneliness newly creeping down my spine.  She, with whom I shared a four-week stand that burned white hot and left me reeling with passion.  Our meeting was by chance and solely based on attraction - what other way is there in a place where a headshot is all one has to judge of someone?  Two creatures of impulse and desire, we pressed our bare skin together like flint upon steel, dangerously close to immolating ourselves with a cascade of sparks.  Such things are not meant to last.  They burn swiftly and brightly enough to blind - robbing one of his sight and leaving only the phantasmal afterimage behind.

Any rational person would have known in their heart that such a relationship was not meant to last.  We pressed our lips together for the very first time - and mere moments later, were bare of clothing and writhing with ecstasy.  In the dark of night in that sweltering apartment, we got to know each other as she pressed her nails into my skin.  It should have been a one night stand; a brief, passionate affair.

The intensity confounded me and beguiled me into believing that it could last.  What started out as night after night of unfettered passion slowly dwindled, tapering off and withering like young pines in a wildfire.  And with the breeze, the fire spreads to other parts of the forest; the winds carried her away from me and left me blackened and burnt.

For days, I could barely lift my head such was my grief.  I bore burns scars in the shape of her lips across my skin like a brother to Abel.  The blame lay squarely upon my shoulders - she had the cognizance to realize that our relations were fleeting and ephemeral.  Had I had the same foresight, had I been more mature, I would not have suffered so.

I lifted my head and let the mist condense upon my furrowed brow.  I had sworn over and over to never allow myself to forget the nature of such relationships.  Knowing myself to be one who thrives on close, passionate bonds, it was evident that such a vow would be difficult to uphold.  Yet, I swelled with hope: just as the first hints of new life begin to emerge from the blackened soil of a wildfire, I felt my heart beginning the cycle of regrowth anew.

prelude

It had been nearly two days since she reached out to me (in an admitted moment of weakness) during the late hours of the night and set my mind on edge once more.  Heartbreak is perhaps easier to deal with when one knows in advance that it will never work out. So why reach out to me like this?  ”It could have been” is, of course, the saddest of words - but I knew that it was not true between her and I.  Yet I must contend with the lingering suspicious that perhaps it is.

It was clear from the beginning that a spark was there.  But it was at all the wrong times - she was with someone and moving far, far away in a matter of weeks.  And yet, as such things do, it started to become more intense with a shocking rapidity.  And for once, this was a good person, with similar interests and beliefs as I. Perhaps even sane.  It was, of course, too good to be true - but sweet nonetheless.  Sweet perhaps because the weight of “making it work” was not an issue since I knew she would be leaving.

But then came the confessions in the dark of the decision she was grappling with.  To go or to stay.  To leave and start anew.  Of course, I could have swept her up in my arms and implored her to stay with me and done the myriad other love-story staples.  I couldn’t let this be anything but her decision, however.  I couldn’t accept the weight of having led her to make a bad choice.  Truthfully, we hadn’t known each other very long at all.  How could I know whether this was just a fleeting crush or something more?  While the question remains, I would not have wanted to accept that she had given up so much for nothing to have come of it.

It was raining when I woke up this morning, and under the pitter-pat of raindrops on a green umbrella I walked to class.  The roof of Tate amplified the sound into a dull roar that reverberated around the students sipping coffee and striving to refresh their tired minds before their morning exams (myself, of course, included).

After class I stepped off the bus and walked to Lake Herrick, nearly overflowing with the quiet rainfall.  I stood on the banks and listened to the sound of water upon water.  With the lake’s edge lapping higher and higher over the leather of my boots, I waited for my regrets to wash away.