A Voice in the Wind

Swaggering down the narrow path, the setting sun glows behind him, illuminating him like an angel.

“Where are we going?” he says, slouching in the seat as I put my seatbelt on.

“You’ll see,” I say, turning the keys in the ignition.

He laughs then, the sound like music from my favourite song. “If we ever get there. I’m usually the one who drives.”

“I know,” I grip the steering wheel tighter, the truth burning my throat and numbing my hands.

Taking the long way there, I weave through streets that look like memories. On the sidewalk I see people from the past, him and I, walking through another time, a time I wish I could embrace again. The tangle of trees lining the concrete stand tall like a parade bidding farewell.

“Leo, do you remember when we met?” I ask hoarsely.

“Of course, I do,” he says. “You told me I reminded you of your most hated characters in the book you were reading. I wasn’t sure what to think.”

My lips turn up slightly and I wonder if smiling will ever feel the same again. “I never meant that. Even from the start you reminded me of my favourite. I was just too scared to tell you.”

“I know,” he says, and without taking my eyes off the road, I know he’s smiling that smile that makes dimples appear on his freckled cheeks.

“Do you remember when I first told you I loved you?” He can’t tell my hands are shaking if I rest them on the fluffy steering wheel cover.

“We were at that lake, right? It was getting late, and we should’ve gone home already because you had to work the next day.”

I nod. “But we stayed there until midnight. The moon looked so magical, reflected in the water. I half wondered if you’d somehow taken me inside one of my books, to another world, a better world.”

“It wasn’t as beautiful as you,” he tells me, his voice so soft it nearly melts into the sad song playing quietly.

“You told me that then too,” I reply. “I remember the ripples in the warm water, and how the wind whispering through the bushes sounded like it was singing to us. I remember praying for time to slow down and not caring if it didn’t, because you told me we’d come back here in ten years to see how much the newly planted trees would grow. And I remember finding more comfort in the words ‘ten years’ than anything else.”

Every turn draws us closer to our destination and every gear change blurs my eyes.

“I remember so much from that night, but mostly I remember you. When I told you I loved you, what I really meant was that to me, you were every moonlit night, every stopped clock, every smile and every one of my favourite book characters. You were everything to me,” I say as the traffic lights turn the same colour as my swollen eyes. Stopping the car, I turn to look at him.

His azure eyes are the complete opposite of mine; clear, free, peaceful. He smiles at me with the happiness I became addicted to dancing in his eyes, making the rubble deep inside my chest crumble a little more.

He doesn’t answer and I know the tears haunting my eyes have distracted him. I glance at him, checking he’s still there.

“Where are we going?” he murmurs, interrupting the lyrics that echo through the car before I can press skip. He used to skip the sad songs but today I do it for him.

“I have to go say something to someone,” I say absentmindedly, already knowing the way too well. I think I’ll come back here tomorrow but I don’t know if he will.

“Who?” he asks.

“Just someone,” I half mumble, squinting against the afternoon sun. “Someone important,” I murmur.

“Why am I coming?”

I hold in a sob then. Because you need to, I think.

“To annoy me,” I try to joke instead.

He doesn’t reply and the more frequent his silences get the more the cavern in my stomach grows. It feels endless now.

“What about that day on the beach?” he finally says. “Gosh, that feels like yesterday.”

My breath catches in my throat. “Not to me,” I whisper, my voice drowned out by the music.

Each shaky breath takes me closer to our destination and each breath is harder to find, harder to let go of.

“The waves were good that night,” he reminds me.

I know, I think, I remember the breeze blowing all my worries away, like dandelions in the wind.

“You told me the ocean tasted like freedom and the waves felt like peace,” he says, half laughing, “and I told you that not everything is poetic.”

“Not everything,” I say. “But you are poetry to me.”

He doesn’t respond and I know I can’t take any more detours. It’s time.

“We should’ve gone home earlier that night,” I say quietly and pause the music. There are no more gears to change, no more corners to turn.

“That’s what you said then,” he says in his characteristically carefree tone. “You told me we had a long drive the next day and I told you we wouldn’t regret making the night last forever.”

I smile. It doesn’t reach my eyes. “It didn’t last forever like I’d hoped. Instead, the next day seemed to,” I say quietly, feeling that terrible forever haunting me even now, months later.

“That day was a blur,” he admits.

A montage of pictures painted with blood flicker through my mind, memories I don’t want to see and pain I don’t want to feel. “Trust me, I know.”

I pull into the car park, and he teases me for parking badly. I suppose I need to practice that; I think nonchalantly.

We step onto the grass, a car door shutting behind us, and then I walk across a field, over past lives, decay and dissolved tears. I expect him to ask what we’re doing here but he doesn’t. He’s talking less and less and I’m feeling emptier with each ocean of silence that stretches between us.

The flowers here don’t look like they should. They look like regret, belated apologies and words that sound like I miss you.

I kneel in the coral-coloured autumn leaves that somehow managed to fall without breaking; something he almost managed to teach me. “You’re usually the one who drives,” I agree with his previous words, “but that day it should’ve been me.”

I look at him and can’t help but remember red soaking through his cloudy white t-shirt. His face is starting to fade, even while he stares back at me holding a lost forever in his eyes. The fogginess that covers his features is difficult to look at, so I turn back to the stone before me.

“Do you remember what I said to you that night, when the waves stilled, and the world seemed to stop, and everything felt like safety?”

“You said you didn’t know what you’d do without me,” he says, his voice as soft as the petals that fall from the fresh flowers in my hands.

I look back but there is only an azure-coloured sky to greet me. I can nearly see his footprints in the dying grass, nearly hear the crunch of leaves as he steps closer. But the graveyard around me is empty except for the disappearing memory of him.

“And you told me that farewells don’t hurt as much when the ephemeral moments seemed like forever.”

I run my hand over the gravestone, wiping away the dust and despair, making the words ‘Leopold Cole Barker’ more clear and more real. The words make the pain and grief come alive like fireworks in the dark.

“Forever in ephemeral moments is a poor replacement for the ten years you spoke about.”

I wait to hear his voice again, barely breathing, barely moving. The wind blows gently and when he speaks I hold in a sob. I know these words could be the last time I hear his voice. The memory of it is slipping away like the autumn leaves that catch the breeze and disappear to the future.

“What did you come to say?” His bodiless whisper blankets me like healing.

My voice gets caught in my throat as I form the word I’ve feared saying since that blurry, everlasting day that captured the most painful pictures, the brightest bruises and the deepest scars.

The word balances on my trembling lips, threatening to evaporate into the afternoon air. It threatens to choke me in sobs, holding the power to free me or keep me tethered to the shadow of his soul.

I hesitate slightly before speaking.

“Goodbye,” I say, half to him and half to the ghost of him that has lingered to keep me company.