Across the Atlantic
Dawn never comes. Not anymore. The sunrise was something I always looked forward to when you were there. When you were close, in the same city, like rain pattering on windows up the street. Those long drunken nights in those cozy Copenhagen bars. It’s tough to write down how one feels, tough to describe the anger and resentment I have towards the existence of a virus, because its existence has deprived me of your touch, of your company, of your voice. Yet it exists, I have to deal with it, and you have had to deal with it. We were going to see each other in Lisbon, but fate seemed to say “no.” I’ve spent many nights drinking myself to sleep and watching Criterion films, talking with friends, but nothing can overcome the imagination, the will of desire, the yearning of an almost-romance that never-was, and now won't be. I see others falling in and out of love during the pandemic, on Tinder, through email, and old friends becoming lovers. You are one of them. I remain alone.
An ocean separates us; the borders are closed. Unrequited love is one particular pain — it is almost included in a poet’s job description, as cliché and droll as that sounds — but the pain of an unfulfilled love that almost was… this is a pain I might consider on my worst enemy: the virus itself.
I wonder what you're doing now, it's 10 P.M. your time across the Atlantic. Are you cozying up with your new lover under the those nordic country skies, looking out towards the still sea? Are you watching a movie? Or are you asleep? Those azure eyes closed and dreaming under the moonlight shining in through your window? Dreaming, the romantic in me hankers, for the fading love that we could’ve had; forgotten now, like an ethereal scent in a storm.
How vivid the memory of sitting across you in that bright café long before the pandemic, your eyes aflame in candlelight as we sipped golden scotch and white wine, and those lovely servers waited for us, refusing to let us leave because they thought we should have a few more moments with each other. We explored each other’s eyes and hearts without a word. Now, awakening abruptly during the night, I sometimes cling to your fleeting scent long enough to trace its thread back down the caverns of sweet sleep, deep into that unforgettable dream.
It is difficult to hope, to wait for the dawn, to look for you, to find you… because all the days are exactly the same, the same pain, the same desolation, and the same isolation without you. Rick had Renault; Ilsa had Victor. I have only the memory of your voice.
I doubt I will be able to see you under the summer sun. You’ll spend those warm evenings trembling close to someone else now, just we used to, sometimes on those rainy nights with nothing to do but drink good gin until we were blitzed out of our minds, sharing stories about ourselves and our desires and the future… all of it is gone now like the messages we draw on the sand, knowing there’ll be a wave. Gone in the emptiness, all that time given for the suffering of fools.
Maybe I’ll never get to see you again, to feel your lips on my cheek, to bathe in that million-mile gaze. Maybe I should accept that, maybe I have to accept that… but I don't want to. What an end to a beautiful friendship.