I've packed my bags, for neither the first nor the last I'm afraid. New Orleans and Denver and Vancouver and San Diego and Austin and the full Eastern seaboard BUT NOT Richmond (boo hoo); I cannot tell if I am running or being driven away. It's neither the first nor the last for either, I'm afraid.
I travel today. I travel every day usually, falling for him at a rate of 32 feet per second per second, but today I travel by train, Union to 30th Street Station at an average speed of 38 mph. Traveling both away from and to, diametrically opposed prepositions, just as my heart is opposed to my head, my soul from body; a strange sort of limbo, really, to which I’m increasingly becoming unaccustomed. My thoughts during this 111-minute journey will no doubt return to him, to thinking how long it’s been since I last played with his dark curls, since we last passed a decadent day together, roaming no further than a 30-foot radius from the bed. Thoughts I normally neglect on the dusty shelves of my underused mind, but today I travel once more to the City of Brotherly Love and these thoughts will be unavoidable.
I’m sorry I never told him the things I should have said out loud, and I’m sorry he never told those things to me. It seemed unnecessary at the time, a time when we knew what the other was thinking before it even occurred to us to think. But I couldn’t ignore the regret written in the lines around his big brown eyes, when we stood opposite each other the last time I was in 30th Street Station, the very last time he wanted me to say what I wouldn’t. And I can’t help but think how many things would be different now, but also how many things would probably be the same, or end up the same.
"Damn it all, Kat," he said. And he didn't know that's exactly what he did.
Boooo Not Richmond.
ReplyDeleteAt least when you don't say those things, you can enjoy the illusion that things would be different if you had said them. But you're right-- I don't think they often are.
well, if you still want to do a crazy road trip you could wing up to philly this weekend. i mean, if i'm getting dragged to the TC thing (AHEM, i'm looking at you Collective) you might as well be dragged along too.
ReplyDeleteI'm partially to 9.8 meters per second per second, myself, but alas, it's not a metric world we live in, is it?
ReplyDeleteI always find myself wishing she would have said more of the things she didn't. There were so many times when we didn't need to speak, though, I think that she forgot I really couldn't read her mind.
Still living and eating and breathing and working and running and biking in all the same places, I see her eyes and fingers and hair and nose everywhere. It's an advantage to move farther apart, perhaps.
And that's the abridged novel.
yeah, it's funny how memories can haunt the places you've been together. or maybe "infected" is a better word. like an incurable venereal disease.
ReplyDeleteHi. How is your drink?
ReplyDeleteHee.
as good as the first. how's your second?
ReplyDeleteyeah, maybe... but can you think of any venereal diseases you enjoy contracting?
ReplyDeleteok, that was the wrong way to ask that question... drinks are good.