10-8-18

Monday October 8th, 2018

Where are we?  Grace is staring into a southwestern tile fireplace.  Her arm is outstretched.  Her fingers caress the symbols.  Her dress collects wind from the flue and keeps changing before me.  I am must, frozen.  Not even the fireplace warms me.

I want to touch her, to become the wind in her dress.  And once I would.  Back in the early days I would encounter her weeping and come in through the window, brushing her hair back and she would smile and breathe me in.  That was in the First place.  We were always close, connected.  I was firmly in that First place and she looked for me and found me daily.  It was the true meaning of not knowing what you have until it's gone.

I felt as if I could stay in that place forever.  I thought she could stay too.  But it is fooling, that thought.  No place is forever, no matter where or when you are.  And one day i woke to find she was gone.  It is very hard to explain how time leaps from within my sorrow.  One day she was there and then someone else was there and I no longer wished to remain in the First place.

I searched for her but could only find pieces, moments split by eternities.  In those moments I blew out candles and she would cry, call out to me.  Beg me to return.  But moments, like people, pass.  We were in that Second place for a very long time and I began to get used to the infrequency of our togetherness.  Time was not so hard for me to abide, for I had so much of it.  It was simply a matter of adjusting expectations.

But time had stayed exactly the same for her and the interval of memory was tearing at her soul.  I began to feel her pulling away.  I could not bring her back.  When we did find each other it was as if prison-glass separated us.  Closer, but never to touch.  And the time between these 'Almost moments' in that, the Third Place was a wretched desert even for me and my deference to time.

And then she sat across from me, staring through the glass, holding the receiver in the crook of her neck, signalling for me to pick up.  She spoke the words, her hand pressed against the glass.  Against mine.

"I have to let you go now."

And so she did.  And so I could not.  And so the world was a vacant apartment and a window that would never open again.  Through long night and relentless wind I stumbled, hands feeling about in the dark for something to grasp but I could not tell walking for falling in that vast empty, that Fourth place that was No place at all.

I believe it is now.  Grace is staring into a Southwestern tiled fireplace.  her dress collects the wind from the flue and keeps changing before me.  She knows the wind is not me this time but she is shrouded in it as memory.  It is not the same.  it is a portrait of a long ago time and she closes her eyes and breathes me out for the very last time.  And I let her.  For she is not alone.  There is another and he is made up of more that memory and wind.  She allows a tear as she sinks into the crook of his embrace.

I slip blindly into the night and wait patiently for the Next place.