In another life, years from now, after we traversed the boundaries separating life from death, I might find you reading the newspaper in a yellow room that smells sweet like honey-swirled-tea or delicate scones that crumble with a baby’s touch. Someday, years from now, you will re-exist to blend backwards in time like the moon shaped cookies they piled on plates we painted those very afternoons before you left, those orange afternoons when the sun stopped for a moment longer and illuminated our stooped figures, illuminated our deep concentration. I needed to say goodbye. I could not simply wait behind the door until the car’s short gasps faded, I could not simply stand biting my fingernails with tears breaking free and plummeting forth. Instead I ran. I ran many, many minutes to you, I secured my arms around your fragile waist like a rope, I wanted to learn your body’s complicated grooves and lines, I wanted to relearn them and memorize them. The years have passed, and how quickly they rustled by, I feel much older than I did those days, I feel my hair beginning to fade, beginning to lose its color, beginning to turn frosty-white like the lilies you once set upon my work table, as if to haul me towards you, as if I was skipping out of reach. It seems we are forever lost, until I separate myself from life and perhaps as another being will find you reading the newspaper in a yellow room that smells sweet like honey-swirled-tea.
