ariel notes

For A. November 2005

They've reached that moment in the movie,
Their last 'will they or won't they?' scene
She stops him, seconds before he’s to leave,
She feels nervous and she feels unclean,
Then they kiss! And it’s soft and warm
And she’s hesitant to say:
‘It feels right’, and he's slow
To turn back to the night,
With his wonderment leading the way.

As she watches him receding,
A smile plays it's tune on her face,
Her eyes are wide and wet,
But she hasn't noticed yet,
Her heart's in a whole different place;
Maybe a cellar of home-made preserves,
Things well-loved and carefully stored,
And it’s raining outside
So there’s nothing left to hide;
No more secrets to be ignored.

She takes all the tops off her bottles
We press rewind on our tvs,
His calm eyes, his quick smile
Float before her like the ghosts
Of our favourite memories;
She loses herself among them,
Spinning until she’s a blur
But when she emerges, she sees herself
More clearly than she’s ever seen before.

The outside world carries on,
In its midst, she is perfectly still
She wipes away her tears
On the frayed sleeves of her fears,
Stripping them off until
She is naked, beneath a street lamp,
Bathed in a fluorescent light,
The buildings around her regain their shapes;
The moon smiles on a nude in the night.

She doesn’t try to cover herself
When she sees that he’s returned,
And he holds the kind of courage
And feigns the kind of calmness
That it takes many lifetimes to learn;
The kind of lifetimes that pass in a heartbeat,
Or the time that it takes for a kiss,
To ripple on out to the tips of your toes
While you’re cradling moments like this.

She holds him, like a suited child,
He leans deeper into her embrace
And their hearts are playing them
Like the symphony of tears,
That are finding their groove on each face,
In a strong wind,
They could lift each other up
And write ariel-notes in the sky,
While we play the movie back,
Windows open just a crack
In the hope that such love will come by.