The Abyss (love in the coronaverse)

I can still see you in that place with the high ceilings; grand, sparkling chandeliers swaying above our heads, shining smiles and beaming eyes over wine glasses and champagne flutes.

That place with the rooftop, where my grandpa used to work as a young man such a long time ago.

 

It’s almost as if time has given you two faces as the old merges with the new, yet we’ve remained the same despite our memories; at the bar, ordering G&T’s, your eyes are on me and I shiver in tempo with the beat.

 

Those nights in September, scented by a thousand unseen blooms and by too many piercing words leaving me with wounds that have still not fully healed.

 

Another Indian summer now and everything is different, but the air remains the same (it doesn’t care about our little human catastrophes).

 

As dusk falls, I watch you walk towards me with our drinks and I suddenly have an urge to run away because I didn’t think it would be like this, I didn’t think I would feel like this. I didn’t realise that time and space would merge under your hands and that I would have no option but to fall, helplessly, relentlessly - even though there was no ground beneath my feet.

 

Your rhythm is (as always) intoxicating.

 

You sit down and I marvel at the deep brown of your eyes and the broadness of your shoulders while I contemplate getting up, leaving, not turning back, ever. I know its fruitless. I know I am defenceless and when you open your mouth, I feel hollow and unprepared at your words. I jerk back in my chair - it’s not violent and you don’t notice, but my body keeps moving ever so slightly as if trying to find its equilibrium.

 

Then you speak of love and I am trying to make sense of your words but it’s hard, I always lost myself in you and now is no different than then.

 

I remember your salmon coloured shirt, your cowboy boots, your five o’clock shadow, but most of all I remember your eyelashes against your cheek when you slept next to me. They were the longest I had ever seen.  

 

As I take the first step, I know that I have no choice but to keep walking.