The River

The River 

She felt the air sigh today. More than a shiver and not quite a breeze. It brought a kind of heartbreak into her home through the gap between the blinds on her window. A mild sense of mourning for something … she wasn’t quite sure what it was. As the clouds parted on the setting sun, a glimpse of the river almost turned blue green in the summer light, twilight settles itself on the glittering skyline and loneliness settles on her like a soft blanket of nothingness. 

Loneliness has many forms and today it turns over to reveal a sharp bite. She feels it dig into her skin and searches her mind for what lies buried. And then she finds it. 

She is thinking of you. Is it possible to miss something or someone one hasn’t really known? A friend that hadn’t ever truly been one? A shared something she had only imagined, a friend shaped hole in her universe. Words that she thought meant a special sharing, forged in battle and strengthened in understanding. And love. Always love. The purest and simplest love that only friends can have for one another. She thought you truly understood her and that the hours spent in conversation meant something more to you than just the words themselves. That you and she would sometimes be there for one another when life overwhelmed, you know, as it can. A look, a slight touch of the hand, a lopsided grin, a phone call or a goofy chuckle saying “hang in there. I’m here.” Foolishness, thinking here was a friendship born that might wax and wane but still last a lifetime.

There is no fault here, or blame. You were just doing your thing, going about your life. it was all in her mind. Or perhaps you wanted something from her. And lost interest when it wasn’t something she could or would give. Who can truly know what is buried in someone else’s heart. 

But in her mind, it was so real. All those stories she read aloud to you. You thought they were fiction, they were her innermost truths, her most buried fears, her silliest and most mundane musings and her loftiest dreams. Thoughts poured from her like a river rising to meet the ocean, secure in the knowing that they would disappear in you and not shame her. And they didn’t. For you, they didn’t linger. The ocean does not really notice what crashes into it. It just rolls on, oblivious to its own overpowering preponderance and to those who drown in its limitless and sometimes harsh beauty, asking silently, futilely, just to be acknowledged. Much like the crowd that surges around this sprawling and stunning metropolis, disappearing into itself, consumed with its own unique fire and energy. 

I will not miss you, she tells herself. I will not look for you everywhere, I will not talk to you in my head, sharing every detail of my day, I will not tell you what the dog did last evening, what I learnt about myself today and what I told myself as I talked myself into smiling through the day. You are now a stranger, a face in the crowd, a breath in the wind. 

She has lost something though. Something she might have treasured. Over the years after, friends will come and some will go, some will become gentle and happy memories, and some will become her own for a lifetime, sisters and brothers of her heart. As time passes, when the air sighs again, this time it will bring a hint of healing in its wings. This magnificent city, with its riot of colours, haze of smoke, its method-in-the-madness chaos and fierce beauty, brings its own kind of healing and oblivion, she knows. 

But every once in a while, when she catches a flash of blue green, a particular turn of phrase, or a sound of a certain kind of laugh, the sadness will trickle upwards, her eyes will well up, and she will remember. And in her remembering, they will be friendship and a closeness, just for a moment, before the opportunity was lost forever. The ocean will acknowledge, fleetingly, the river.