Some have erased this line.
—Oscar Levant
Separated by Words
It’s misty tonight. I wanted you to walk with me all the way to the harbour, blurred by rain—but you didn’t. You’re still angry and I’m to blame.
It sounded like a good opening, but would it work? A letter dropped in her mailbox—a note left in her door? It all seemed so weak and pathetic.
He pulled up his collar against the damp cold. He was wandering the streets without her, lost in his own dream.
His thoughts went back to that beautiful fall afternoon. They were walking up Philosopher’s Walk heading toward Bloor Street and The Coffee Mill.
“I saw you speaking with Trish,” she said, and stared straight ahead.
She hadn’t raised her voice. She even whispered the words. It seemed so benign, but he knew different.
“I was asking her about the Victorian Poetry assignment.”
It was a safe reply and true—as far as it went, but Rebekka wasn’t buying it.
He could tell by the way she walked on in silence letting the frost from her breath hang in the air.
He watched the cloudy mist and wished he could decode its secret semaphore, or understand its pantomime.
Damn! He was doing it again—lost in his own thoughts, not paying attention to what was real.
“You don’t really care, do you Richard? Do you ever think about me and what I feel?”
Here it came. He had been expecting it, and wasn’t surprised by anything, other than her rage. He measured his thoughts, calculating a response—much like measuring out his life in coffee spoons. Eliot’s image seemed so appropriate in this situation…
“Ouch!”
She slammed her books hard into his shoulder and turned on him in fury.
Her dark hair was disheveled and her lips curled back. She was a she-wolf cornered, defending her own. He was struck by the poetry of the gesture.
How would he describe her? –A dark gypsy tormented by passion? No wait—wasn’t that a mixed metaphor?
“Richard!” She was pleading. “Are you listening to me at all?”
He watched the rosebud lips, the gentle curls that framed the pale heart-shaped face. She was Catherine and he was Heathcliff and they were standing on a windswept moor.
The thought struck him. It might not be a moor but a cliff, a rocky outcropping backed by towering clouds.
He turned back to face her and she was gone.
He looked about wildly, feeling himself a madman—Heathcliff abandoned by his soul mate.
He scanned the path, but she was gone—probably up the stone stairs to the street and out of his life forever, laughter's glow on her lips.
No…not laughter…suffering—yes, that was it—a pained look on her face.
He walked on alone to the Coffee Mill to pen his latest poem. He’d give it to Trish, just to spite Rebekka—that’d serve her right.
He did give it to Trish and she, of course, fell in love with him and his words and the abstracted stare that drew out her soul and filled her with longing.
It lasted a week, until she like Rebekka, stormed out of his life.
So, here he was, wandering misty streets seeing watery wraiths of lovers past inhabit the doorways.
He had it—his epiphany—his moment of grand revelation:
No one alive,
Knows more than I,
The pain of separation.
So, walk with me,
My Love,
Tonight…
All the way to the harbuor,
Blurred by rain.
He was wandering the streets without her, lost in his own dream.
He was one poem to the good but two women to the bad, nevertheless, he emerged the winner.
He was content now—there’d be no need to mail the letter.