We had agreed you might come to visit this October for your birthday, but then we let it slide. I got so caught up in work. I’ve had so much lately, too much, and so I took a much-needed break from the city and my apartment, from me. I wish I had not run out of gas so utterly, and more I wish I had contacted you to tell you how I’d let the magazine run me down, but I was caught up, dealing with the nonsense, all the deadlines and egos, and then the race for the finish line and some version of calm. So I rang you on your birthday to tell your voice mail I missed you and that I was sorry we’d not made the trip happen. I’ve not heard from you. That’s the way of distance, of lives lived separately, of inertia. But today on the subway platform one of your songs came on in a shuffle on my Ipod. There was your voice, its fine, clear pitch and texture, its beauty and feeling; and there was you there behind it, breathing there. You were performing, taking chances as you do, and because I know you, I could hear you despairing in turns and rejoicing at others. What singular songs you’ve written, lovely Becca, never mind all your poems and prose. I wish your father was not ill and in that faraway world. I wish I could make you feel as we did in graduate school, make you laugh about that woman contorting me in ungodly positions on that old tanning bed all for a simple leg wax. This is all to say, I’m awfully grateful that you’re in my life, even if you’re not at hand. I’m grateful for the ways we still know and love each other even after all these years, after all this distance. I remember you.
Submitted by: Amy
[ add comment ] ( 241 views ) | permalink |
( 2.9 / 98 )
Archives