It began with a gift, a twig plucked from a tree, the only source of life for the two leaves attached. When I blew him a kiss, he gripped his chest on the corner street, and the bus moved on. That orange bus, my palm against the pane as it tore me away from yet another night. And he serenaded me at Newport Station with his beautiful violin, enthralled as we parted and I left him again. The train doors closed but he continued his song, the notes that warned me, the music I never heard. 1
It continued with a dream. I entered his home through the back gate, and stood in his garden as he kissed my hand. Promises of his return filled the winter trees, and I waited for his warmth once again. Suddenly uneasy, I stalked the garden in the midst of its renovation to pass the time, but found the concrete was nowhere to be seen. I remember I panicked, I thought it impossible, a garden rebuilding without a vital element, and frantically tore through myself to find it. He left me in anxious despair, and simply never came back.2
And when it happened in the reality of the past, I grasped his sleeve and begged him to stay. His eyes brightened with a deep concerned blue, and he never questioned, simply accepted, reassuring my insecurities with empty promises. He would stay, he said, for the dream was unimaginable, until once again, he took his affection, and lovingly threw it at another.3
Three years and I still wait in that garden, but like the neglected plants I continue to grow, and despite the life that carried without him, I beg him to see me now. As I am, what I have become. Convincing myself he would love me again, a cycle of denial and unachievable hope, but hope all the same. Like the eyes are never filled with seeing, nor the ears with hearing, my body was never filled with feeling. The long forgotten wine behind the cellar door, ageing gracefully with every passing light, waiting to be tasted, its beauty appreciated. And the repressed dreams of his ghost that merely serve as a temporary lifeguard in the well of constant longing. Of never achieving. Of empty seeking.4
So I recreate him now, and search for him in others, like a substitute of obsession formed on my only benefit, and drowned in the spit of countless disappointments – his disappointments – the ones that follow me still, and push me to drive me to better myself, not for myself, but for the moment our paths finally cross, and he chooses to love me again. We have done this before and there is no end, these moments are, these moments have been. What we were meant to do we have done, and I know we will do it over again – but for the first time, this time, when his beautiful violin serenades me on platform two, when his music echoes throughout the souls of Newport station, I promise him, but most of all I promise myself, that I will stay on that platform forever.5
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