FREE LOVE LETTERS

Love letter # 56

They tell us all kinds of lies. It’s not that they are cruel, just that they want us not to hurt so much. I have learnt to smile and nod. Bite my tongue.

One of their favourites is: time heals. Yes, the years are a sticking plaster, a morphine drip – but where is this healing they speak of?

You and I both know that time magnifies. Is not this distance greater now, the echo more poignant? Every smile is a tightrope walker and memory is a shudder in the wire. The space between airborne and descent is no more a thin line stretched taut between what is and what is wished for.

If ever I reflect upon it, the emptied out room we once shared is quieter and more awful than ever; the scent of ashes asphyxiating. I swear some days it feels like half of me is back there in time, still dancing with you.

I know you feel the same. I can hear it in the tiny gaps between words; see it in the way your eyes shy. So why are we here – and not there? What damn rule, what cursed idea of moving on and letting go, sees us sitting here in polite, paralysed desire?

I would smash the wisdom of millions to sit next to you. I am unhealed by this so-called time. The more I don’t have you … well, you know.

Would it be alright if I reached across this table, if I swept the coffee cups to the floor, if I set fire to the miles with a touch of mouths?

We would surely know the truth then. Surely.