I can't hear you breathingI am watching his hands as he sits forward, elbows on knees on the step, fingers loosely wrapped around the wine glass, curls low over his eyes, not watching the ocean but instead focused out on nothing in particular, unchecked expression staring bitterly into what remains in the bottom. In the grass. Into thin air. In the back of his own mind. Into nothing at all or maybe so deep he wouldn't be able to describe it adequately if asked, as a fault and fatal flaw in all of us, not having the words when they are needed most.
I can't hear you leading
More than just a feeling
More than just a feeling
I can't feel you reaching
Pushing through the ceiling
Till the final healing
I'm looking for you
Until the sea of glass we meet
At last completed and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside
And laughter drinks them dry
I'll be waiting
Anticipating
All that I aim for
What I was made for
With every heartbeat
All of my blood bleeds
Running inside me
Looking for you
Not even remotely a flaw in one's ability to describe a moment or a feeling but a nod to how big that moment is and how inadequate the words become overall.
His hand is healing at last. Third cast is off as of yesterday and he is favoring it slightly today but you wouldn't notice if you watched him. I notice because I've known him forever, and I also was the one to drag him back each time to have a new cast put on when he would cut himself out of the previous one, sit through the lecture and promise to keep an eye on him and help him enough to not mind it so much, but if you knew Lochlan he is single-minded and low on patience as a rule. At least he looks like himself again. His lip healed, his eyebrow grew back, and he doesn't resemble a prizefighter so much as the busker that is hard to forget, quick with the charm, as always.
He has also shaved off the beard, and I am left cold against his cheek, hands up under the curls that spill across his shoulders. Summer hair. Lochlan can only be convinced once or twice a year to cut his hair and the rest of the time he lets it grow into unbelievable round bouncy curls and it's sort of funny and amazing and beautiful too. If I had hair like that I would never ever cut it. And I wouldn't listen to anyone either. I would sit on the step and drink my wine and watch the sun fall into the sea and I would swear if you came too close but wish for change and I would go to bed silent and sullen and warm.
He puts his hand out long enough to take mine and then he tucks it back up under his arm, against his chest, pulling me in tight beside him. I am shivering slightly. It's grown cold outdoors but he does not feel it yet.
Watch the skies, peanut, he instructs and dutifully I look up, following the angle of his chin so that I can see what I'm supposed to. The stars are beginning to light up, one at a time. The hues play from purple to gold to orange. He's no longer looking at the skies now, he is staring at me. I keep looking up and he presses his forehead against my hair, pushing against my head. I push back slightly. Reassurance. Stability. I am the one who makes them feel safe when it's supposed to be the other way around. My breath catches in my throat, a lump that chokes me up and I can't breathe so I sit, still as a mouse and just as quiet.
Finally I realize I am holding my breath long after I win back control of the sudden sadness and I let it all out in a shaky exhale. This is not lost on Lochlan, who releases my hand slowly and moves away with a final kiss on my hair. He stands up and pulls me up with him, into his good arm, the place one will always find a Bridget, for a final wordless squeeze and I am shoved toward the house gently, almost imperceptibly, back toward the warmth and the light inside. Back toward my own reality, tripping out of nostalgia reluctantly and with purpose. I am not his and yet he remains mine forever. Or maybe it's the other way around. I don't know. It's dark and my brain is tired and the tears still threaten and the nights are so long. In the darkness the years dissolve. In the darkness memories spread in a film over the water, diluted, dissipating easily to return perched atop the sunrise, so we won't miss them, as if we ever could.
Coffee is always bitter and must be sweetened each morning. This is why. When we meet across the island at dawn he will take my hand and tuck it back into his and Ben will do the same and at some point I have to squirm away from both or I don't get any coffee at all.