The tide
She pulses like the tide. Urgent. Quick. Reaching out for something beyond you and then in a moment rushing back clattering over shells and tumbling kelp, draining in retreat, leaving wrack and foam. Curling back in a small defense.
And even if at first you step away on toe-tips there is an eventual moment when she touches and from that inevitability, with each new visit, you begin to contemplate the immensity of what is offered, the frightening expanse. Each leaving, after water runs and sand mirrors sky, a moment of relief. The detail from absence and the outline of what is left behind.
Should you embrace her (you should), remember the unexpected cold, the way your feet look and how she changes you because by late-afternoon there will only be the faint grey of grubby shadow high on the beach, no footsteps left. Below at the darker edges, where tide runs sharp against the sudden depth, water prepares for night. What you are left with: memories of things that you didn’t think important.
On a couch in someone else’s house. Watching her tend a plant. Tired eyes. That dress she wore, those shoes, that soft perfume long gone. That painting she thought looked like you (how gently she considered you). Idle moments. Tired gladness. And still you want to remember certain things, shape the whole like a half-waking dream, content with its forced conclusion.
There may be pictures but what of them? There is that tin of praslins now filled with artifacts (the dried head of a rose, a shell, a butterfly wing, pebbles, polished glass, a silver ring, a broken piece of jade, a folded tram ticket). But these drift-things will mutely nod to what you forgot to remember.
Instead you understand how your own blood is tide-like. The fluttering of it when you press against a pillow echoes every longing and ache, everything that you wanted to do differently. Whatever reservations you have put them aside. Fold them, and fold them once more, slip them into a book and abandon what holds you from her. Even the bittersweet water is better than nothing. But know now that you can never be everything to anyone.
An earlier version was published August 26th, 2009