“moving off by herself to be alone near water"

I woke up on Saturday and I hung out at my house for a while, then I decided to go for a walk downtown to get some coffee. I could have driven, but I started counseling on Friday and my psychologist said it would be good for me to go on long walks. Once I got the coffee, which I ordered not off of the menu, but made up to be as close to cafe con leche as I could figure (2 shots of espresso in the shortest cup they had, then filled the rest of the way with steamed milk), I walked out and did not turn right to go home, but went left, pulled down towards the water. I kept walking down that way, by myself, past all the couples and families and friends out for breakfast or shopping on a warm Saturday. I only knew the water was down there, a small creek, sandwiched between downtown and a major road too far off to be downtown, because She used to work at a law office down there; we would eat lunch in that park and I would secretly cradle the small of her back as we stayed just behind our friends for the opportunity to just breathe nearer to each other. That was the summer we got together, our most hidden time, but an adventure we were hiding together, for both our sakes.

I reached the creekside park, memories coming back to me I didn't know I still had, even past jealousies bubbled up inside of me; I walked under the rotary-sponsored pavilion we would use to shield ourselves from the Missouri sun. That was my first summer experiencing humidity, feeling sweat all over my body, popping up in the folds of my elbows and the bends of my knees. I was sick that summer, too weak to be warm unless I was in the comfort and newness of her arms.

I walked through the pavilion with only a short pause and haunted smile, and went down off the path onto the rocks to be as close to the water as possible. I had purposely left my journal at home, my goal that morning was not to go sit at the coffee shop writing away, getting lost in my words and becoming unaware of everything around me, only to worry later how alone I became through my memories, how loud I let myself sigh, or if people saw my silent tears.

It was at this point, on the uneven rock, that I first tried to remember what “The Invitation” asked of me. Without tears, and staring at the Burger King coffee mug lodged between two rocks I felt like somehow I was learning how to enjoy the company I keep in the empty moments, and that this may be the first time in my life for that.

The writer inside of me did take over. I finished my coffee and carefully pulled apart the paper cup. I licked off the last of the foam inside the cup and wrote along the outside. I had a limited amount of space and when I finished it felt like it was time to go. Some familiar fears came back, because I wasn't truly in nature, I was simply next to a stream, in the middle of a city.

I again tried to walk home, and again failed. This time, after forcing a senior couple to wait for my decision whether to cross in front of their car or not, I turned around and walked in a direction I had never gone before. All the buildings I walked by had memories of Her. The streets, the sidewalks, the weather, my clothes, the hat on my head, everything has an aspect of her.

I never tried to take All Things She, stuff them in a shoebox and shove them under the bed. I know she is much too large a part of my life to ever be closed away, but with each new day and painful time, I seem to understand that much more a pull "Toward Amnesia." A read and re-read book that takes on a new meaning with each new day: that the pained protagonist is not so extreme in her disappearance, in her cautiousness to not leave any traces; that the darkness now left inside of me desires those same things.

I found a trail I'd never been on before. It was paved, still in the middle of the city, but at least hidden from seeing the roads, even though I could hear the cars. Near the beginning of the path I just joined, the trees opened to the left and the grass sloped down towards the same stream, but in a different place. I veered off the path, I tried to find nature and be away from the world. I walked through the wet sand and didn't immediately brush off the invisible spider webs dancing on my forearms. I was still holding my opened coffee cup, my opened heart written and displayed on the outside. I kept following the stream, crossing on the taller rocks back and forth from bank to bank. I stopped in the middle at one point, and hated that I didn't have more paper. I thought of an “old and sometimes hated friend” and her words to be with moving water, that it can help me, can help us all.

Sitting on a flat rock not closer to one bank than the other, I rolled up my jeans and took off my shoes. I let my feet feel the cool water glide over them and the slippery moss beneath them. It felt good to get my feet wet, to hold my arms out like a tight rope walker, forced to smile at my uneven footing. I think my unconscious was tricked into having that same sense of balance, I may have teetered, but I didn't fall; when I wavered, it was my own hand pushing me back up again.

I felt young there in the water, hidden from the trail, exploring the mild current and tangled leaves. It reminded me of being a child, back behind my house, before I really knew anyone, before I knew how much things could hurt, when the green glow under a canopy of trees was a new light and experience full of wonder.

I climbed back upstream with my shoes in one hand, and curved thick paper in the other. When I got to where I left the path, there was a storm drain, and the deepest part of the stream I'd seen so far, and it was full of little fish. Fish that seemed to me too big to live in that little stream, in a four foot by four foot by four foot area under a concave cement gutter. I sat on the opposite bank, my feet drying, and I whispered my writing to these fish. I verbalized the thoughts stained with coffee and now creek water to animals without ears--a least not ears in the way we think of them; maybe they've already heard what I had to say, the vibrations sent to their ears from my feet moving slowly towards them from downstream.