One Swim More

There is a rhythm in walking, left, right, left, right, makes it easier to think, or harder not to. And thinking to the beat, right, left, right, left, makes it harder to finish a thought, once it gets twisted and irregular, once it isn’t neat. Once it loses that one-foot-after-another flow, so you can either grind to a halt or let it go, and to sate the brain, which loves a purpose, march out another. There’s no shortage.

I am thinking about a night long ago, and how if I had known what I know… But I had drunk enough, or more, when the bell sounded out and the barman called, and there’s nothing like last chances to stir a want for more. And I always wanted more. Go on then, I said, as if he twisted my arm, which he didn’t, not then…

And I am thinking about the day I knew that it would not never happen again, like he said it wouldn’t, again, and I don’t remember what clicked, but knowing didn’t change the fact that I had nowhere to go. And that I loved him so...

I am thinking about before he and I met, on a winter night, cold and wet, and how I wrote a note, that time, to say goodbye, and writing it made me cry, to think of my mum and my dad reading my words and how it would hurt and how I wouldn’t be there to hold them and say “it’s okay, this is what I want, it’s not your fault, you tried.”

I am watching my feet, one, then the other, and feeling the pavement beneath, and thinking perhaps it wasn’t his fault that I am like this, that I should have left after one final kiss, but final kisses were never my thing, until someone else decided they were. No fruit tastes as sweet as one we will not taste again, and the air tonight tastes like rain…

There are clouds, above, and patches of blue, and in one of those gaps, the sun pokes through and sends rays of light, discernible beams, in fanning stripes over the sea, like God must be looking, and lighting my way, and I remember this light, on so many days, like the one where I walked this same walk in need of a friend, and they say reach out, but nobody came, and I wondered, if I never came home, would I even be a tale that they told, we are born, and we live, and we die alone; but the gulls flew under those dark mounded clouds, and God lit the sea in glowing shafts and I always cried, at the end, when he stands in the tomb, “eyes, look your last” leaves no room for another sunset…

I am thinking, and still, my legs carry on, the order was given, it’s time, go now, get out, walk on. I know where I’m headed, after the places I’ve been, and I’m sorry, I am, but the pain I am in, it cannot be worth it. I don’t want to do more. So I’ll follow my feet down to the shore where the tide will be stronger than I can swim, all I need do is keep walking in on these thighs that contract, on these hips that move, with this nauseous belly, still growling for food, even now, when I told it, that meal was your last, its ready to fuel me, though I didn’t ask, and these lungs stretch my chest with that air laced with rain, and knowing I won’t, I want that again, one more breath, one more view, one more taste, one more tune. One more embrace, before I am gone.

But there will always be lasts, and I’ve had so many, and some are good riddance, and some…

I am thinking about when my children were new, and the million lasts which I never knew would be the last time, and what I would give to lift her again, to spoon in his bed, or put my nose against her head and smell something so raw as love. I am thinking about the sound of his voice, the man in my world where I still see a boy. I am thinking about the pain in her heart, but also, also, that the last - this last - will be the last…

I am brought to a halt, ankle deep in the ocean.

With one hand, she coaxes me in with butter-soft fingers, and with the other repels me with icy nails. Come in, go back, submit, retract, and both feelings are...

This, then, is the last call. The last time I will feel the sting of cold or the caress of water. I haven’t swum enough, though I have felt that bite a thousand times too many.

This is the last memory of how it is to be hurt.

This is the last view, of light on waves and slanting rays of sun finding their way through glowering cloud.

This is the last bitter loneliness to bear.

This is the last sound, of gulls, and distant traffic, of someone laughing, and the lap of the sea.

This is the last chance I have to love.

This is the last taste of salt on my lips, and the last ache in my shoulders and the last beating of my heart.

The last breaking of my heart.

Because, at the last, there is nothing like last chances, to stir a want for more.

There is a rhythm in a heartbeat. Makes it harder to deny we are still alive.