Open Days

Yesterday at noon I stood at the street corner where I last saw you standing, love. The midday sun breathed furiously above me, sending waves of heat to my head like a steamer in a spa working full gear with a broken timer. I stood there open and still the world would not yield me.

The last time I saw you standing, we had not seen nor spoken to one another since you and I decided, urgently as a rainbow, and as genially, to take time off from each other. It seemed, we both agreed, that our feet were no longer on the same orbit and we thought it best to seek and recover our runaway fire on our own. We had to take our leave, simple as that, like snow. And we did.

It was a quarter past the minute when the hands of the clock converged and gazed full tilt at the sun like a compass in perfect agreement with the north. Between your corner of the street and mine was a gentle stream of people flowing from both directions. They were there, just there, like clouds or paper ships, shapes merely, neither bridging nor lengthening the distance between us. I wanted to rush toward you like an eagle on the hunt but my legs declined to be an accomplice to my criminal mind. 

I just stood there for half a minute, and then another minute and then another, taking it all in. I stood there beholding all of you – your radiance, urgent and impenetrable, your implacable stillness, your improbability, and your immense silence, made more immense by the din of the busy car-strewn street around you, and by the countries of yearning and uncertainty that swirled around me. 

I stood in my corner of the street trying to unsheathe your silence and you stood in yours embracing it; the story of us playing out even when you and I were adrift in different continents.