“It is said that mourning, by its gradual labour, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot believe this; because for me, Time eliminates the emotion of loss (I do not weep), that is all. For the rest, everything has remained motionless. For what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indispensable, but the irreplaceable.” – Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
We’ve rolled into foxglove season here. I like seeing the spires out of nowhere with their cascading purple mouths all the way to the top. Childish spring giving way to raucous summer and its green abundance.
I still miss you with every turn, still blink back thoughts of instances where I should have been more loving. My love persists on empty birthdays now, like someone turning up to a party after everyone has already left. Maybe I can be a manifestation of a happier image or conjure up something kind in the absence.
All I want to do is peel back the film between us. You’ve been gone so long and it’s only getting longer.
I have dreams where I’m saying it was all for nothing. I get to see you when I’m asleep (my mind is at its cruelest when you aren’t happy to see me). Sometimes I look out of the corner of my eye because if I let on that I’m looking for you, the game is up. I’ll wake up in some layer or another
but I can’t get back. I have to wait until I can catch the next one.
If it’s the weekend I’ll sleep in just to have that chance.
If I get too overwhelmed thinking about how I missed you right at the end I’ll try to remember all the times you dropped everything to come and see me. I’m so sorry the last time turned out to really be the last time. If I’d known, I hope I would have dropped the act of superiority I’d been wearing even though it didn’t fit me. I hope you knew that the heart of me loved you and that I was just trying to help in my own way, the same way you tried to help in yours.
I hope
I know
I hope
I know
Hoping is the tide swaying in; knowing is the way it’s sucked out as surely as a sigh. The hoping knows the knowing will come, even while (particularly because) its existence is its own negation.
Much easier to paint a picture of the sea than of an ending, which will only make me cry in any case.
Letters for Rent 