from fireworks to fireplaces/summer stole what fall replaces and now/now we’re people watching all the people/people watching us right back

of course we’d never watched the new year’s eve fireworks together. our time together was up before the year was. in a cruel twist of events today i found myself tracing with my index finger our footsteps along those streets and paths we’d so many times ambled down together. past that intersection point between wardour street and piccadilly which was often the point at which we’d bid each other goodbye and go our separate ways, all of us. you and your flatmates on foot back across the river, and us on our number 14’s. later on things would change. traversing strand, we would somehow end up in front of charing cross station – i could never remember the way. it wasn’t very much further, but just so we could hold hands a little bit longer before i got on the tube, we would walk. some days we walked all the way back to the other side of the river. you’d ask if i’d like to walk along strand or embankment.

and i would invariably pick embankment.

which brings me to the fireworks. the ones we never saw together.

this year as i witnessed the lavish display on the tv screen, you crept into my thoughts again – unexpected and uninvited, as was always your style. in an uncanny way it is your absence that ultimately reminds me most of your presence. who knows when these jarring recurrences will cease? until then i will go on living from one maudlin recollection to another. until then fireworks will always only mean one thing.

~ by may on January 9, 2008.