Someday We May Smile

The air probably smells of something. I wouldn’t know, my nose is always clogged. A few years of flirting with drug use and taking the scent of things like rain for granted will do that to you. At this point, I’d settle for sewage. They say the olfactory is the most powerful of the senses as linked to memories. Maybe that’s why every experience from the last few years has faded to blackness, like a movie screen before credits I won’t be mentioned in. For all my talk of feeling very little and remembering even less, you cross my mind more than I’d ever admit. Especially on nights I spend in places where you linger. I still hear your voice echoing along the water. All you said to do was slow down.

I walk down the path that leads East towards the river, past rusted ruin skeletons which know me by name. Down here, the silence waits in stillness, disturbed by cracking twigs as I move towards the docks and build a fire. For a while, I sit and fiddle with the flames. You were always so much better at this part — the patience — whereas I would be the one dumping kerosene on the cardboard, challenging the blaze to meet my eyebrows. All you said to do was slow down. That night, just before I lost you, we were sitting right here, eating mushrooms and listening to baseball on the radio. The murmuring resonance of the crowd was all that spoke to me; I thought about the stadium full of life, each spectator teeming with an equally vivid reality just as complex as my own. I suppose I went quiet as I pondered because you nudged me.

“Good caps, huh?”

I grinned and paused to let the silence engulf us again.

“What would your parents think of you down on the docks again with me?” I finally offered.

You rolled your eyes. “Why must you always bring them up? I think the person you’re really in love with is my dad.”

“It’s true,” I shot back quickly. “I just wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

You smiled, so warm as it always was when I saw it. It made me question why we’d even built a fire. I blew my nose. Nope, still stuffed. The truth was that I wasn’t any good for you and most people knew it. Your parents for one, even though they seemed to like me well enough when I tried my best to be impressionable. Your friends for another, because I could never seem to get it right around them. I would get too drunk when we’d go out, say too little or worse, too much, and wake up the next day hating myself for it. But when you and I were alone together, things were simple. It’s why I cherished nights like the ones by the Ohio. We'd sit and talk for hours, our chairs sinking into the ground while the river washed away another few millimeters of sediment from beneath us. Every day, this place — the thing we most shared in common — fought the current to remain so that future generations could also admire the evasive beauty of the past. I wished it would never falter. Suddenly, two white blobs in a tree beside us broke my train of thought. I squinted, wondering what I was seeing. A hornet’s nest? A spiderweb? But then, I spotted movement and jumped up out of my seat.

“Did you see that?”

You turned your head and watched as the two masses simultaneously took flight out over the water.

“Barn owls” you reasoned. “You can tell by the heart shape on their faces.”

“What? We’re nowhere near any barns.” I said back.

You laughed. “They don’t have to be in barns! They probably live in the mill.”

We watched the pair soar for a minute, before you whispered, “Aren’t they beautiful?”

I actually remember thinking they were sort of terrifying, dark black eyes staring back at me, plotting their next move. But when you said they were beautiful, I instantly agreed. You had such a way of making me see the splendor in things.

“They’re a cute couple,” I said, putting my arm around you. “Look at them go.”

“You don’t know that they’re a couple, maybe they’re friends.”

“Oh yeah, they’re definitely just friends. That’s what they’re telling themselves. But when you’re together under the moonlight,” I paused to look at you, “things just start to make sense.”

You blushed, or maybe that was just the fire’s glow. “Well, I’d be more worried about dollars than cents in this economy. The daddy owl needs to get a job.”

“Oh my God, you are factually unfunny,” I groaned. It wasn’t true though, you made me laugh more than anyone.

I wondered then if the owls would stick together as we spent the rest of that night creating a make-believe life for them. It felt as though we were both floating real ideas to each other, beginning to think about our own future as we daydreamed. I remembered every detail about the owls' pretend world in case I ever got the chance to make it real for you, but we never got the opportunity to write the rest of our story. Sometimes I tell people that you packed up and left. That you went to study abroad, or that a distant relative got sick and you needed to be there; terrible lies in the hope of not having to explain the real reasons. It was easier to say that you moved away than to admit that you moved on. For a while, I looked at those captivating owls as an Albatross that cursed us with the weight of expectations. I chuckled out loud. “Owlbatross”, you might’ve said. But in the time since I last saw you, now that I’m back on my feet, I’m glad that we shared that moment. I’ve accepted that there will be others. Who knows, maybe better ones.

A ghost of myself will always be down by the river staring out at the abyss, feet stuck in the ground like the roots of trees that will outlive us both, waiting to see you again. But my body will turn away from the shore and make an effort to be better. At times, like tonight, I walk down to these docks, where the color of the chairs has since faded to bleach. I sit where we used to, looking for life above in the leaves, and realize I’m not the same. I’m learning patience, but not on the condition that you’ll owe me something if I master it. I’m trying to slow down, but not in the hopes that you’ll notice. The memory of you makes me want to be someone you would admire so that I can love myself the way I loved you. Every year, we’ll fade farther into nothingness until I’m no more than a blob, indiscernible from a barn owl seeking refuge in a tree. Yet, I’ll be there. So someday we may smile and scarcely know each other, but both be greater for having met at the edge worlds. It’s drizzling now. I take a deep breath, and for a moment, I smell the rain…