Whatever Together

I used to go to a cafe in town. I'd order a coffee and sit in the window, make it last an hour. I'd look at the door when it opened. Eventually, I stopped hearing the bell. I stopped seeing the people on the street until I didn't know how long I'd been there. In there, days were all the same. How many, I couldn't say. Out there, things changed. Like memories; and they're all from my point of view. Then the time comes when time is the only thing you want. The thing you didn't know you had and tomorrow, today will be dead, forgotten. I've wasted time in ways less noble than this. When eventually I have no more to spend, I'll look back to these days and the pleasure I took from remaining suspended in a moment for all these uninterrupted moments of coffee clouds, rainy days and passers-by.

We used to laugh. Now, the memory has been replaced by the story. However confusing this is, however lost I felt or wherever my thoughts went, everything would make sense. When we were here, together, it was a day when we both smiled and looked forward to tomorrow. Before everything else was more important. The longer I sat there, watching the door opening and nobody I knew passing through it to help recapture what my memory saw - the more I bring with me and the more I try to forget. The more possibilities there are that never turned out, the more I regret and the more I miss out on. Where I could be now if only I’d spoken. If only I’d stopped wondering. I’ve cried tears for those people who disappeared, the ones I let go and the ones who left for their own reasons. The me you knew was who I was then, but this is me now. When you realise that it's more sitting alone in the rain than holding hands in the sun, then it's time. It’s time to go.

Waiting was its own destiny. Sun turned to dark skies without a sound, without the past catching or leaving. Like checking the dial tone, the moment I leave will be just before the moment she arrives. Then she'll sit here, amongst the mocha clouds and pastries, waiting. We never talked about the future. Just the here and now - which itself informed the distance that stands between us and what we should have had. Become.

We should be watching the feet on the pavement. The rain, the snow - looking up as only we used to do. Watching them trying to run, only getting in each other's way. Sharing mysteries and dreams but never planning for what was next. It never came and we lost each other in the dark. Too many things we needed and so much time spent doing things that didn't matter.

The sound of the espresso machine stops and the silence that replaces it makes me realise that everything is over. The day, the conversation, the memories I'd held close enough to touch. The lights go out and the doors close. My feet on the pavement, taking me anywhere.

We don't have long, so take every moment and make it shine. Lived somewhere between the here and now; walking by riversides and talking for hours. Heady days and humid nights. We said the future would take care of itself somehow - we said we'd know when we got there.

Well, we got there and we're further apart than we were before we met. Why did we say whatever together?