Recall
By Farirai Manonose
To you.
Your infectious laugh and the sound of your voice, it’s all fading from memory. I hold on to times past as if my life depends on it. I hold on to them like a man clutching to a piece of driftwood in the ocean. What will happen when it disintegrates? When it decays from the passing of the years. I wonder, will I sink, or will I swim? If I sink, will you come and rescue me? It’s a cliché I know, but you wouldn’t believe how true it is, that without you, I can’t breathe.
“I can’t breathe without you.” Words you may have heard a countless number of times, in a song, or a poem, or a scene in a movie. I always thought that people were overly dramatic when it came to love. How could a person’s absence make you lose your breath, how could it tempt you to lose your life? How could it be that love could make someone so crazy? You were the romantic, and I was always pragmatic.
I am alone speaking of a man, floating in an ocean of tears. I write down everything I feel and everything we were. If I write it down and keep the record with me until I am gone; perhaps I can extend the life of this driftwood. Perhaps I can float in this saltwater for eternity.
I understand now that I was naïve. I had not seen how powerful love could be. I was not better or more evolved for not experiencing such intensity. I was simply inexperienced, and perhaps emotionally immature. It was easy to fall for you, to choose you above all. Our love was slow, sweet… right. Our love was comfortable and that is why like quicksand it caught me off-guard in its depth. You might be surprised by how impassioned this letter is. I have become a romantic! Would you believe it? Now I understand the theatrics that comes with love. Such drama is necessary to express the full extent of this powerful emotion.
I cannot breathe without you. I can’t. I have visited the places we used to roam countless times. I thought perhaps you might deign to show yourself to me once more. I thought perhaps I might see you. I think I almost did when I closed my eyes against the harsh sunlight that once welcomed our love. I almost felt your strong sun-kissed arms around my neck; your legs wrapped around my waist as I carried you across the sand. But every single day it’s getting harder and harder to recall. The smell of your hair or the exact shade of your eyes. There was a time when I could have painted all your features accurately from memory.
Now I cannot even remember the way you walked. I know that it was a fun walk, one that I adored with all my heart. Was it that you leaned forward a little? Or maybe it was a dramatic swing of the hips. Try as I might, I cannot remember. I try to recreate you, here on paper but whatever echoes of you remain in the corners of my mind are but a cheap imitation. It is not enough to have only a glimpse, a shadow, a memory. It is not enough.
What if this ocean is just a million broken souls’ tears? Holding on to some driftwood but unable to recall why they even try? If so, it is a dark world indeed. For I would not wish this fate upon my worst enemy. Maybe these letters will make sense of my world without you. Maybe one day they can create you as you were then: next to me and happier for it. As in love with me as I was with you.
They say that time heals all wounds, so why does mine still fester just beneath my skin. After all these years, my heart is not healed. The memories fade, but the pain remains the same. Can you imagine feeling such abject suffering for a reason whose face you cannot remember?
Remember, the feel of your hands in mine. The footprints we made in the sand as we danced to the music of the seagulls. If the ocean of the past could hear me, I would beg it not to wash them away. I would put them in a glass box, where I could see them every day. So that I would always remember a time when I loved and was loved in return.
Yours.
