La Casa Azul
Do you remember the silence in Almuñécar? I thought I’d never forget it.
I held on to every fiber of the memory for you. I have polished it every day since then. I think about it often to keep it bright for you. I remember every star I saw, Casiopea, and the three that blinded me up ahead.
Thinking and thinking, I kept thinking in the dark while we sat silently still. Who was the great beauty in your life, I thought to myself. I looked upon the water logged mail on the kitchen table where I could find the word ‘tragedy’ scribbled almost illegibly at the bottom of our PG&E bill. Beside it I could make out the letters of your name, written down and erased multiple times. That was months ago. During the dark dusky hour in Herradura, as I remembered our home in San Francisco you rubbed away my anguish. With a sweep of your hand, brushing it all under the rug. I shook the memory from my eyes, I was afraid you would see the images moving deeply within them.
These are good thoughts, I told you. Hardly believed me I bet. In the silence that followed I dreamt of our life in Spain three years from now, or five. Married—with kids? A beautiful home, but with what husband? It was always a pipe dream I had invented and day dreamt of. Even if you had made me the promise. Even if it was supposed to be true. Even if you believed yourself. I knew it was the type of promise you made to a child before tucking them into bed; no there are no monsters under the bed this time. Yes, the yellow button beneath the bed would ward off evil ghouls. I think that even the stars I had mapped out that night were hexing me with their toxic space dust, blurring my vision.
I’ll never forget about the peace though. It was something I didn’t feel often with you. But for a brief inhale all of the moving air between us froze, suspended midair capturing our togetherness in time. As I write these words I’m getting real. I am becoming real. The memory is starting to dim, and the feeling is fading, my minds eye sharpening. I am removing the veil. The particles that once floated between us are tightly orbiting one another again. It was as though they were taunting me with how close they held one another, reminding me how truly far away you were, are, have been. Like how real time and space does. The universe didn’t stop time for us. Our love did not float between us. It didn’t even stop to linger on the imagery of us. The world kept spinning, the stars weren’t twinkling, I blinked a few times and the blur was gone. There were no poetic words written about us in secret alley ways. If you looked into my weathered notebooks and loose papers you could find them all written there. I asked the universe to speak through me, but all I heard was the slow drip of a leaky faucet…The stars did not pirouette, the sun did not dance, so I played God and made it so. Before I had time to exhale you’d already clicked your way to Reddit on your dim screen.
I guess I really did remember that moment on your behalf, I knew you wouldn’t. If you ever want it back I can tell you all about how in love with you I was. I can tell you about how close I felt to you. I can share with you all the ways I admired you and your smell, and your arms wrapped around me. I remember that moment because it was special to me, but I can only hope that one day you remember the half of it.
If only we could have the perspective of the future while we were in the present.
