“Are you staying?” I already knew the answer, the small, chilled word in my chest.
“No. I can’t.”
Silence there, neither daring to touch the jagged edge.
“Starry starry night,” he hummed as we walked toward the pier. I squeezed my hands in my pockets; pretended not to hear.
I couldn’t understand. He’d filled my heart and mind, rocked me to the bone. Had I been in love alone? He said something I couldn’t hear over the waves beneath our feet, touched my cheek, felt the tears.
“DON’T!” I stepped back. He looked hurt. I was glad. “Remember that!” I cried, “The last time you touched me.”
“She needs someone.”
So did I, he couldn’t see. Sudden shower. Silver-grey diamantes fell to become one. I turned and ran. He yelled, “BREN, WAIT!” but I didn’t look back. I ran home in the rain and discovered in the bedroom he’d already started to pack.
****************
Breathing. My mind awake. Blue-grey branches reaching. Washing line. Leopard-like domestic cat. Passing time, his, mine. Deep breaths calmed my soul and stilled my tortured mind. Knowing if he returned we would’ve lost each other again, he became the rain against my window, the burn I tried not to feel for the longest time, until only the feintest scars remained.
****************
I saw them at the club once, I remember. One August/September.. I was there to arrange an event, book the room. They were sitting at the bar.. a stripper and her father, anyone would’ve thought, drinking in the afternoon.
That’s where he needed to be, propping up a battered psyche. I laughed so loud when I heard it was over. I laughed and laughed till my pillow was soaked and my stomach ached from crying and I knew then, since the day he’d left, a part of my soul had been dying.
Now years later, he texts in lonely hours, suggesting we meet at Galleria and other ordinary places, where we could get lost in a sea of everyday faces for a while, but we both know I’m not who he wants and he’s not what I need.
“I don’t need saving.” I reply.
****************
Winter branches sway. Glimpses of blue-gold sunkissed sky, gently swept aside.
Sometimes I recall a summer night on Scarborough Beach. Beautiful, without a care… we decided to sleep there, under a blanket of stars and January moon. West Coast Highway, a distant hum beyond the dunes. Warm breeze on skin. Squeezed, laid bare in hot ascension, without apprehension, lost in our ocean-scented crush. I licked the salt from his mouth, felt the sand in his touch to the South, a sheer veil of lights under inked-dipped sky and we shone so brightly. Young neon hearts on a Perth summer’s night.
Somewhere tonight its that night still. We’re asleep on the sand and the ocean is still and I still love him… in the fading light and the millions upon millions of spaces between leaves.
