Anodyne.
Fighting against the rushing current of time, I swim towards the memory of you.
The way your dirty blonde hair muted underneath the rainbow lights of the bar. The texture of your blue jeans as your knee brushed against mine, shy and cautious and eager. Your vintage jacket, crumpled upon the brown wooden table we leaned upon, decorated and ornate with full glasses half-forgotten. I swim towards the memory of your brown eyes, a color I once thought dull, ordinary, and plain. I remember them vividly, and now I think of the color differently.
Because I live inside them, existing in the capture of the leaning of your thin body into mine while we stumbled through conversations neither of us paid attention to. I only saw the handsome lines of your cheeks, your jaw, the thin skin of your body hiding under subtle cologne and a thin black sweater. Inappropriate for the winter, but perfect for you.
I swim towards the memory of those neon lights glittering in the beautiful brown of your eyes, the humid tension between our hands and chests, the sound of your voice. The sound of the water I swim in, the harbor’s echo calling to me.
I am no longer afraid to say I loved you. I am no longer ashamed to say I did from the start. I did not believe that was a truth, love at first sight, and if I did, I believed I was unsuccumbing.
But I was. And I am thankful for that release. I am thankful for you.
How you held my hand on the way to your apartment, soft and timid, the way your thumb rubbed and glided across mine. The taste of your lips in impassioned eagerness. The smell of your skin as I laid behind you, combing the strength of your back and shoulders with delicate hands to lull you asleep. I knew I loved you within the gnawing of shared ecstasy that lasted through a long and protracted night. And when the morning came it saw us tossing in the ebb and flow of honest craving and genuine submission, feeding honest and pure affection to the genuine human connection. The sun averted its eyes, and I was thankful.
You are the smell of cedar during a rainstorm. You are the porch, the chair, the cigarette and beer, sitting quietly listening to a chorus of cicadas calling to you from the reeds on a clear and humid summer night. You’re the earth and I’m the astronaut stranded on the moon. You are the harbor, and I am the sailor.
Our time was brief. I wasn’t quick enough, my arms weren’t long enough, my hands weren’t strong enough to keep you from the rushing current of time. If only I had been a better swimmer.
If only I had been quicker.
