Bad idea

I went back this evening. Don't know why. In a way its easier not to pretend that there is something good that can come out of my being here. Some reason I ended up here that is independent of him - of either of them. Visiting museums, walking along canals, meditating on the train. That I can somehow rise above it all. So when I just let myself ride a train in the twilight, to the streets where he might be, I feel like a bird migrating home. Relief. But then I'm there, walking to doors I am shut out of. And then I know I've made a mistake because the ancient pain roars into life - not dead. Sleeping pain that feels like anger, too - because the face of this pain is anger. It screams into the grey sky, "why?"

I want to believe there is some meaning to the pain.  This was what I told Hilde those weeks ago during lunch. Always inappropriate - talking about religious belief with your boss. Particularly when it seems she doesn't like me very much.
She said, "I don't need there to be a god to make the universe any more amazing."
"I don't need god for that," I replied. "I need to believe that suffering isn't meaningless. If there's a god, then something can be redeemed from pain."

God was silent tonight, as I walked along the farmer's field in the rain. Or, at least, I couldn't hear above the chaotic echoes of memories and questions that were never answered. How do you let someone go if you never understood why they are gone?

I can't think my way out of this one. I've tried to deploy reason. This is the purpose of my writing here. And writing it. And now it is sent and there is nothing more to do. To know. Did it reach him? Did he read it? Did it matter? Does he still exist? I will never know because he will never come. Because this prayer could not find wings strong enough to move my god of improbabilities.

It was a bad idea to come. No answers here. Only reminders of a loss that has never healed. Of a future that died in its infancy and which I carry in my arms. Grotesque to other people. Spectacle. Horror. Put it down. There will be others. Walk away. But I can't - any more than set down my arm and walk away. It is part of me. You are a part of me. You, bright spirit. Keeper of my heart. You walk beside me in the rain. You sit with me by the lake and this - this is your hand in mine as I weep.

My heart raced (as it races every time I think of you) and I couldn't calm it down to sleep. I meditated, desperate for rest, and at last drifted. In my dreams I am suffocating in the well of a dark ship, or falling from a great height. And then, before I woke this morning, swimming in the ocean, skimming the surface as though flying, trailing my fingers across the taut, rubbery skin of whales that rise beneath me in the waves. And he is beside me. And there was joy. This thing in my arms is not dead, I say.  Not dead. No more dead than my pain. Sleeping.