(I sing this song for you, Shawn.)
I can feel the
summer giving way in my bones, just from
the weight of the air. This time is coming to a close. You have been gone for weeks now, and I have felt my love subsiding into
a quiet place where it need not speak
aloud.
I am leaving
tomorrow.
I have never grown so much. I am on my back in the
waters, trying to say
goodbye in my own way in my head, as the
friends who feel like family move around me in hushed giggles, trying not to give away our
midnight trespasses.
You, I thought I knew you. You, I cannot judge.
But you judged me.
The
moon is circling overhead. The clouds obscure it as they always do. I feel the motion of the earth as the motion in my arms,
propulsion in a thick dark medium of
sound.
I wonder where you are now. I wonder how it was possible that the tropics awakened something in
my blood so violently as they did and then ripped me open. All my world came crumbling down this
summer, and now Autumn threatens to bring it to a close.
I crumbled and was destroyed that I could at last step back and
rebuild.
I feel so
full I can hardly believe I float.
I am full with the stars and the clouds and the night on the
beach when I let my better judgement get away from me, when in my
passion I lost you forever. I am full with the excitement of
death, when we nearly were washed into the sea when her air ran out
underwater, and we couldn’t get back down into the caves that lay below us for the
tide. I am exploding with the notion that these have been
the best days of my life.
Exploding in a quiet night, amidst the friends I love.
Without you. As it shall always be, and it is better for that. The moon makes a subtle smile as my
companion.
And what if there were two, side by side in orbit around the fairer sun...
Perhaps I will look back at a picture of this someday and laugh. I know I will. You gave me something, and you took it away as quickly. But I am
thankful for that. Go on, Shawn, and live with yourself at peace.
Blame me. It makes me freer. And I can sail off into my own
night sky, dreaming of the places to come, weighed heavily with the things you’ve shown me about
myself and the world, and what I thought I knew about
you.
(lyrics from Nightswimming, by REM)