waiting for the evening

I remember where we were.

The cold red floor and the soft drip-drip-drip of the last remnants of the afternoon’s rain from the damp yellow windows beyond.

Me on the tattered sofa that had somehow become yours since they’d brought it over from the house that was being sold.

And you – a half-closed eye in a dream, off running through wild grasses on some strangely coloured hill against some strangely coloured sky.

I remember how loud it was – the sound of the clock from the next room – the clock that always ran late because everyone forgot to wind it – the clock that was always so loud when everything else fell silent. Most evenings when it was just me and you and an empty floor.

A book between us and you were always only waiting for the evening.

Sometimes the fan would be working – that huge hulky fan that drowned out the clock and conjured the old ghosts under the cupboards. And under the desk – and the table – but never under the beds – because they knew where you were.

We’d leave the room and go off wandering now and then – your soft footfalls treading through the house like some sleek searching spirit of wakefulness. And mine, trudging through the grime of some unnamed hill after Charlemagne’ s army. And when we’d return, yanked back to the room by various entities, we’d listen for a while, for each other’s presence, to be comforted by a special kind of quiet silence that was ours.

In some strange miscalculation of time, we’re still there.

In that cool quiet room brimming with ghosts and words.

Perhaps it’s wrong to tie you down with it, the red floor and the fan that never works now. Wrong to tie you down – you of the strangely coloured hills and the strangely coloured sky.

But that quiet silence is tied to that room – and it drowns the clock, now that the fan doesn’t work anymore. And you will always be in my quiet silence, even though your footfalls are free now, on that strangely coloured hill, against that strangely coloured sky.

And all of those colours break in through the yellow windows and spill across the words. And the ghosts. And the tattered sofa. And that shadow by the bookcase.

Where we still are. You - the half-open eye in a dream, waiting for your evening. And me on the tattered sofa that will somehow always be yours.