Love Letters

Why don’t you come and visit now I’m staying at my parents’ house? We could spend the days in the loft talking and drinking wine, shut away from the world outside, except perhaps, for a walk along the beach in the evening. Letting the days and nights dissolve into one continuous conversation. Do you remember? It doesn’t sound like much, just a few days doing what we used to six years ago. To anyone else it would be nothing; you can appreciate how wonderful it could be, as you know how wonderful it was.
 
We could hang out of the skylight and stare at the stars, listen to the dialogue of the nation wandering aimlessly below. Living entirely on the same pack of cereal for a week, refusing to leave each other’s company. Feeding off this alliance with no rational desire for anything. Like saints we could forgo the essential and accept the miraculous.
 
We could trail around our hometown, letting the flood of memories wash over us, swallow them until we are full; gorged and saturated with a life once lived.
 
Shadow our former selves until we are back where we started so many years before. I’ll even take you to his house. Wait patiently while you go and knock the painted wooden door, maybe he’ll be in. I can see the ring of dirt where half the door number is missing; I can see the number at home in a box hidden away between old clothes and dated magazines.
 
Fumbling down the stairs he will answer the door in socks and shirt, looking tired. The afternoon sun behind us will make him squint at our silhouettes.
 
Inside the house is cool and dark, one of us is reminded of being in a church. Billie Holiday is being played somewhere in the back of the house, you recognise it and smile.
 
We are there for no other reason than company, his soft hair hangs in front of his eyes and you want to touch it. Today he is happy and there is hope inside us all.
 
When we leave it is dusk outside, with the change in temperature he hands you his coat. Gallantly you refuse. You know it is his only one and he will be needing it later. Where he is going it is much colder than here.   
 
From that moment you can say goodbye secure in the thought that today he is safe, he is happy.
 
We trail away, his house getting smaller and smaller in the distance, until it fades into nothing but another terrace house in another road of this town.
 
We will wander by the sea, watching the surf lazily drift in and out. This ocean has born witness to so many events in our lives and still it is open, forgiving, ready tonight to accept our actions whatever we choose them to be.
 
Time here seems to last forever, there is nothing here but time. You and I safe in this summer. It is in the nature of hopes to become illusions, yet I am always lost when my hopes come to an end. 
 
Evening has come and it is time for you to go home. Before you do, we can sit on the bench between the church and the cemetery, watching as your bus goes past again and again. Neither of us show any sign of moving.
 
The smoke from the cigarettes circle high above our heads and our voices. The patterns merge and then disappear completely.
 
You can tell me how you are feeling about going home and I will offer you the chance to stay here longer, still knowing you’ll refuse. Then when the buses have stopped running, it will be too late for you to walk home, you can stay with me another night.
We can live in this time when you and he are happy, when we didn’t know how life would be, when we thought that we could shape the world.
 
Why don’t you come and visit now I’m staying at my parents’ house? We can go back to a time six years ago, it doesn’t sound much. To anyone else it would be nothing, but we could remember a time when we didn’t know about the world and planned how we would make it.
 
Georgina Benson © 2002