“Turning Page”

Written Winter of 2021/ First published 31 December 2021

This fiction/nonfiction piece marks the close of old loves. A new chapter awaits…

As I folded the clean, warm clothes from the dryer, music played through my Bluetooth kitchen speaker. I had selected a random playlist.     

The pause came between songs.  

Within a couple of piano notes, a few words, and the female vocalist’s timeless sound, I was moved.  It was a new song and yet was familiar, like my soul knew it deep down.  And like rushing waters, you invaded me: I was filled with overwhelming love; memories of you flooded my mind; and you possessed my soul. Something in me knew you knew, too.

And something about that realization sent me into an uncontrollable cry, anxious to rid myself of these feelings. I wanted to escape them and fast, but it was too much.  I was a hostage to my emotions.  I hurried through a list in my mind of what I could do to flip the moment to it’s just a song playing in my kitchen and I am good and I am strong and…   

It was beyond my strength– too powerful for me.  Instead of fighting a battle I wouldn’t win, I resigned myself to the moment fully.  I surrendered in hopes that in a few moments, I would go through some exercise where I would recover my emotions, clear my head, and move about my day as normal.         

I have never prided myself for being creative, but I have been known to underestimate my imagination.  It took me to a place where our footsteps walked together once before. Only once. Why this place, I don’t know.  I tried to stop this stream of consciousness; to exorcise you out of my system, I stopped my chore to write what I felt was taking place within me.    

***

I’m across the street from a corner of a place I know we’ve been before, together– this lifetime and maybe many others.  It’s the outside entrance of a quaint store in an artist town where trinkets are overlaid in fingerprints of friends, lovers, strangers. And I stare, not because I think you’ll be there, but because somehow I know our intertwined souls dwell here like ghosts, timeless and suspended between this world and the next.

The sun shines behind a building somewhere, and traffic carries on like the seconds that run to the next on my watch.  I feel its rhythmic beats against the skin near my wrist.    

I mourn within because it’s like you died– we died; I know I’ll never have that feeling again… when I was with you.

I linger before I turn away in an act of farewell.  I know I cannot stay– that our souls will remain and maybe someone passing by will pick up on a vibe of our love’s past and fall in love on that same street corner.  Except for them, they will make it.  They will make it and will love each other until life runs out of time.        

   

I sit in this moment. I don’t know what this is.  I suppose it doesn’t really matter.  All I know is I’m drawn to you and I haven’t even heard your voice in so long, or felt your touch, or sensed your gentleness with me– yet you are with me nonetheless.   

There at that store corner.   

Here in my kitchen.        

Ours is a soul tie, and we cannot be.  Not in this life.  Those are the saddest words I have had to type today.  That in finding you again, you would be the “turning page” to my next chapter in this life. Without you.

Ironically, I thought you would be the one to tell our story, where I never knew I would. For you loved me and I froze.  At the time, other stories preoccupied my mind; now you’re the only story I want to tell.  If I must.  

That’s all I have left: a story.

I will tell the story you’ve long forgotten, I’m sure. Like a specially wrapped gift, it’s been placed in my hands.  I know it’s mine as I gladly receive it with both arms open. I embrace it with a grin and am satisfied knowing what’s inside.  It is appreciated and in my care.  It is mine to guard– to watch over– much like I felt with you.   

Can we agree we will meet in the next lifetime where we are both ready?  And if we do, if we can, let’s love like another lifetime doesn’t exist– like ours is the last. For when we meet again, our young hearts and old souls will know.  We can meet on that store corner, but this time from that day forward, never take your eyes off of me again.  Place one hand in mine, and pull me closely, slightly into your body and wrap your other arm around my waist like we might dance and watch me surrender into your body’s frame.  You will like me better this time.

I can see us now on that day when we finally meet again. I am in your arms, and as you face forward, you tilt your head down as I turn inward where you feel the brush of my forehead against your jaw.  You keep me within your gaze.  We hear our breaths for one another, and you listen because that’s how you know I’m taken, completely, with you.    

As I walk away, under my breath I half-sing, half-say a verse to myself:        

I know you agree.

Original painting by Lorraine Christie  

“Turning Page” by Sydney Rose  

“Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová

♥