She held him. Let him nestle into her shoulder to fight off the cold. The world was all wind and falls and roaring space. He dared to peek, but clung tight. And, in the span of an evening walk, she grew into his memories. Ten, twenty years could go by without them ever seeing each other, but she’d always be the one who cradled him on that frigid evening—that she was where he hid from the biting winds. He would grow, and might never dare to tell her the truth, for memories of the heart are saved and guarded. But she was there, in flashes of brilliance, bits of light at the back of his mind. 

Twenty years did pass. She and the rest of them grew old. The walk that night blended into a thousand others. The little boy was grown. He could no longer put it to words. He was too old now himself. It was just a feeling, but where ever he saw her, there were flashes of gold and wind-tossed grain. 

He was expected to cut the flowers down, but they were something new to him. He didn’t want to, and once again the pull of a manly duty collided with the nature in himself.

Seemed to his mind that decades of drunken rambling filled his days up to that point. He had never seen flowers. Never looked. He saw fields and trees, and he liked them well enough. It wasn’t until there was no more green that he finally began to open his eyes. Night after night of swabbing floors and scrubbing toilets. Sharing dreams and poetry with that outlaw of the cleaver class, laughter with the aging gangster. Earnest folk behind counters. 

After the mopping, his heart roared out at night. For this, he knew the trees by moonlight. Longing drove his legs forward, made him stare upward and stay out late, not to see anyone, but to see everyone. No one in that city was who he was looking for, but still he liked to look. He drank at the bar and listened to their words. He walked the cobblestones in the rain and inhaled their cigarette smoke. And somewhere, in one of those days, he looked down and saw it, so strange and small and—just right. It was the first flower he had ever seen. It grew in the sidewalk on his path to work. 

Years later, and hours north, flowers were everywhere. Rain and sun abounded. The people were different, but no less lovely for their ways. The mountains were the same. He found thousands of little white flowers in the forests up north, stood there in the quiet just breathing, wanting to know something about them, wanting to know about the world. Could he ask a tree? He beat his head against the walls at night trying to find some answer to it all. To the flowers and the trees and the waves that crashed against those cliffs. He thought that if he could find the answer, he might understand all those people he knew for so many years. All of it was pointing to somewhere or something or some feeling inside himself.

He didn’t cut the flowers. 

To see their bodies strong was enough. He could keep going, stay as strong as he might, if only to see their bodies strong. Their legs smashed through that sand, tore through the green river. They laughed and fell and ran on, in a way that he could only reminisce. There was pain in watching them. It was a pretty pain—beautiful, joyous. 

He had spent so long watching bodies. Big bastard on the left, tall eight with long arms on the back of the scrum. The lightning legs of that winger. Look at the way he’s walking; look at the way she is. Bodies and movement spoke a thousand words a minute to him, and now he saw them, thin and muscled, on their way to maybe finding what he had: happiness in the green waters, freedom in the barefooted trails, running until lungs no longer mattered and hitting with the abandon of someone lost at play. 

To see them now brought a thousand sunsets to his eye. Brought back old friends and brothers and sisters. Brought back fields that were bulldozed now. It brought his old legs back, and his old heart too, and the fear that panged that heart. To grin as they played was not enough. He ran too—had to, and splashed in that water with them, and lost himself as much as he could in the awe of their hearts in that sunlight. 

He takes Legos out of my hands,

not to snatch,

but because ideas strike hot.

He looks out over the world;

smiles into the wind—as though he recognizes the hills of this place.

He nods his head and says so.

They are old friends. 

I believe him, and wonder who he is.

With kids raising kids, maybe I’ll know by the end.

She hated cold water, but on their first date she dove into the sea with him. The waters were wild, and the wind threw sand at them, and still she laughed before going headfirst into the brine. She kissed him behind a rock. There was sun and salt on her skin.

“You cannot go,” he said.

She was the pragmatic one. Would always be. She made the breakfast they ate. She made better coffee too, even when the beans were the same. Food became their temple. Mountain rivers, their paradise. 

A little blue car. A little red one. Stuck in a sprawling metropolis. Stopped in a mountain pass beside a well. A tiny apartment. A bigger one.

“You cannot go.”

He had not said it for many years, but he still thought it. Thought it in the morning when she woke him up. Thought it well into the nights when she lay asleep. 

There is a song of our hearts that no one has ever played. Pieces come close, but no song has ever rang true of us. 

It’s a tune I search for, 

some melancholic tribe of strings, 

some happy folk for the road. 

I can almost sing it when I sit across from you and the coffee is good.