I’m tired of writing about missing you. It’s like an old song
losing its charm because it’s played on the radio too often and no
longer brings productive emotion, just the wretched, wrenching kind
that leaves one breathless, but no better off. I want to know the
worth of these days, not those—to hold the gentleness of early
breezes moving curtains and the mourning doves calling in the first
sun and the rain dropping easily from grumbling skies. I want to plan
a trip or even a day without looking over my shoulder for you. I want
to look ahead and find something worthwhile waiting there.
I wonder whether
it’s good that you’re not here. What would you have done in this
plague, this virus? Would you hide silent in lockdown or disregard
it as irrelevant and cast yourself into the hands of God? You often
surprised me with your reaction to situations like these—cautious
sometimes and rash others. Now, though, you left me to make my own
fate in it, trying to sort out what is the loving thing to do not
only for my own sake but for the well being of the people around me.
But I’m still
writing about you. I don’t even really want to, but nothing else
comes out with any degree of passion. Almost everything falls flat in
pale comparison. Almost.
There is Florence,
though. Florence has never paled. It’s been two years since I last
rounded the corner of the Via de Neri and strode into Duomo square,
gasping,
two years since days began with cornetti and blood orange
juice, two years since I watched the sculptors through the alley
window, two years since the bookshop and the street violinists, two
years since eating al dente spaghetti beside the medallion recording
the death of Savanarola in the Piazza de la Signoria, two years since
the poodle on the train, two years since the Arno at sunrise,
two
years since holding the head of Christ in my hands at the Opera
Museum.
Maybe that’s how I
exorcise you. Maybe that’s the way I regain my freedom, to allow
today to step in front of yesterday. You are, after all, part of
yesterday. I woke up this morning and you didn’t. You are either
always awake or not at all, but I still cycle through days in
repeating rhythms of work, rest, and sleep.
I have to decide. I
have to intentionally move from this place to that. I’ve been lying
in bed waiting for you to come back for more than four years. I can’t
do it anymore. I have to swing my foot out, put my weight on it, and
take a step. See—I’m doing it. And I’m not looking back. I
can’t imagine where you’ve gone, but I say this to you, wherever
you are: Don’t reach for me. I won’t be here.
