Songs of Love, Songs of Indifference

“So that’s it then,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry Stu, but it’s just too difficult. The distance and everything...”
“Right. Okay,” he paused. “Is there somebody else?”
She shook her head, pursing her lips as she did when she meant to show she was serious. Her hair had grown since he had seen her last. It flowed more as she moved, the curls were longer and more open. She looked beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
Outside the café, the lights in the windows of the shops around the square were bright, and the walls of the church picked out the grey of the cobbles paving the space below the upstairs window. People walked quickly in the cold.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She did not reach for his hand.
He stirred his coffee.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not, are you.”
“Just a bit...surprised, I suppose. Your last letter was so...happy.”
“I am happy,” she said.
He sighed.
“I wish you’d told me before.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?”
“I suppose not.”

This time she smiled and reached for his hand. He stiffened but he let her do it.

Cold kisses in the bitter month, with the moon in the arms of Orion.

Tents lie flaccid on yellowed grass. Cars fill the space were darkness encroached on drinking groups the night before. There seem to be more people today than there were last night. It had been colder.
She was tilting her head, just as she did when she was doing anything that she didn’t like, anything that made her feel bad. She pushed it all to one side, and the effort cocked her head. He stood in front of her, knowing. He had seen where she had spent the night. In the grey-green morning when returning to the caravan, shivering, his shoulders jumping from the cold, there were two figures close together, one unknown, and the other all too familiar. In that light, in that moment, in that cold, there was no feeling.
An offer of a lift, with a waiting car, a running engine. A sudden decision. He gets out and stands in front of her. Things have been declared, things have been said and changed. All there is is the retreat, but it cannot be graceful. It cannot be easy.
“I thought you said you loved me.”
She tilts her head. A wing of raven hair lolls out into the space by her cheek. It is six in the morning, her face and hair are immaculate.
“I did, but, things have changed. Things will change. I’ve never had a relationship last the summer.”
“We could make it last.”
“No.”
“I had to check.”
She stops tilting her head.
He hesitates. He gets back in the car. The sun is barely over the trees around the field.

The steps to some songs have to be danced, willing or no.

Her voice breaks down the line. Something leaps in my chest. I bite it back.
“But why?”
I am feeling this. Every second and every question and answer are pulling me back and pulling me down but this is not something that can change.
“Because wherever I am I don’t want to be wishing I was somewhere else. When I’m in...Rome, or Venice, or wherever, one thing I don’t want is to be wishing that I was in Leicester with you.”
A silence throngs between us. It is an answer that isn’t an answer, and we both know it.
“Well,” her voice breaks again, “I hope you have a good time.”
Another silence. I cannot thank her for that.
“Look after yourself, and you know, carpe diem.”
My heart.
My choice.
Myself, standing in the kitchen, staring at the pinewood grain of the side of the dresser, listening to a sob, broken by a click and a high tone. My hand, resting its weight on the green plastic as the handset settles in its cradle. A quiet creaking shift of weight on the floorboards outside the door.
“Come in.”
“Was she okay?”
“Not really.”
“Oh,” and the face.
I look at the floor, and leave the room.

You can’t count these on your fingers, you can’t put it down in words. You can only pick the moments, and keep them, and live on with what you have.

Someone out of another tale that I cannot tell just yet thought that life isn’t about making the right decision, it’s about being able to justify your decisions to yourself, and to know that you made the most of whatever path you happened to think was right at the time.

But I disagree with her. It isn’t about winning or losing or justifying anything, it is just making the best decision you can at the moment you make it, and living with it, even if, especially if, you know now that you were wrong. That is learning. That is living.

And when you’re on the recieving end of any decision that you can see has been made in this spirit, you take your moments, your memories, and you keep them, and you do your best to live on with them without taking them out of who you are. If, after the dust has settled, you can still laugh at a joke, remembered without rancour or bitterness, then maybe you’ve kept what was created.