Stirrings

Dear E. Spring is starting to stir from momentary sleep. I can almost inhale its blurred, fragrant ripples the way I can sense the ghostly tiptoes of melancholy sneaking in. This, unsurprisingly, saddens my heart more than bright summer afternoons. It saddens me more than anything else as a matter of unshakeable habit, because spring is a time when my thoughts swell into full-blown remembrance and every terminating minute seems to lead me to that disappointed promise of us riding horses down the pine-scattered slopes of a northern city.

Forbid me from mumbling yet another apology. I only have myself to fault in the grand scheme of things. Right from the awakening of this germinating fondness you have been ardently steadfast about your claims while I stagger along intangibilities of work and self-defeating prophecies. You have been very patient and such resolve is a rare gem to stumble into in our increasingly-disposable world. Yet nothing can ever thaw out your special spot in my mind. We have downplayed it with humor, even took a crack at alienation. Nevertheless this difficulty cannot be concealed: submerging ourselves in pressing demands of work and distance cannot deny the smoldering thirst of waking up next to your slow, steady breathing on lazy Sunday mornings. I do try, yet my triumphant moments are short-lived.

There are times I catch myself wondering how you are faring. If you’re still chuckling over that private joke, if you’re still wickedly inclined to bring up the wisecracking stab over how I sounded on the phone at the pregnancy of November flu. I ask myself whether you have added another pebble in your jar of mementos, or I play a speculating game whether you have walked barefoot again, reveling in the crackling scherzos of desiccated twigs and moribund leaves. Are you still writing journal notes in the margins of your books in a secret hope that in so doing you will appease the fury of the gods?

Whatever occupies your thoughts presently I certainly hope you will not recall that blender joke. Because I cannot bear imagining you having that memorial nugget leak out of nowhere and make you erupt into hiccups of laughter. Because it will only make you sad afterwards. That breed of sadness, my adored truant, will only make me drink once more in the simmering cup of missing and wanting. Yours, LoudCloud, in equal measures of apology and regret.