Recollection

First posted January 2021.

My love, it was so quiet here. No breath to break the solitary silence of this empty house, no soft rustle of curtains in the summer breeze, no footsteps echoing down dark, deserted corridors. Yet I heard you, your voice long-gone ringing in the bottom of an empty glass, whispering between the dead stalks of flowers in a vase, humming to your reflection in a mirror fogged by memory.

Time eludes me. Through the window I see bright sunshine, and in the space of a blink it becomes gently falling snow. I have watched from afar as your hairs one-by-one turned silver, matching the rowing trophy on the mantelpiece. Do you remember the day you won it? It was so hot I thought I’d faint, and I couldn’t even get in the lake. I was so relieved when you hugged me after you won; you were so refreshingly cold from the water. I remember when cold felt refreshing; now the cold is constant and inescapable. What I would do to feel the hot sun burning my skin once more!

Your poems, your paeans, and your elegies were the only music I could hear. Did you know, when you slipped them beneath the door of my gilded cage, that I would read them? In your absence, your words were my only comfort. Some could only have been about me, but some I did not understand. I imagined they were about me anyway, about the life we might have had.

Little memories, like watching you write while I played with the cat, weigh more than grand adventures. Isn’t that odd? I remember our trip to Rome, the scent of citrus in the air as we walked down ancient streets, and to New York, where we could hardly hear each other talk over the noise of the crowds, but those remembrances feel less important, somehow. I wondered which memories you fondly recalled to keep yourself company in the lonely night.

I watched your clothes grow threadbare, worn away by years I cannot fathom. How long has it been since my heart last beat? I no longer remember what it feels like to experience a minute or a month; it is all the same. If not for you, I would not realise I had been gone more than an hour. I remember buying that waistcoat for you, tracing the swirls on the shiny new buttons with my fingers. They went dull, but I saw your fingers echo mine over and over. I hoped you thought of me when you wore it.

Time was of no consequence to me, but it was to you. You were like water cupped in my hands, slowly seeping through my fingers, dripping away into oblivion. I realised, suddenly, that I was going to lose you. And you see, don’t you, my love, why I could not let that be? My existence apart from you was not without you. Every moment was filled with you; you were all my sightless eyes saw, all my silenced ears heard. What good would eternity be to me without you?

I did not mean to wake you. I had hoped to give you the peaceful end providence granted me, though much too soon. But I suppose it was understandable that you would feel me and your end approach. Was that the first time you had seen me since I died? Your expression of sublime awe seemed to indicate to me that it was. But I had always been there, my love.

Your blood must have been warm as it washed over my hand, down the blade I slipped into your chest, but I felt nothing—nothing, but rapturous joy that at last, we would be together again.