The World Has Moved On

         It rained again today. I thought about you, and lost my nerve. The streets were all empty, the alleys devoid of life. Those parks and shops you used to love were dark and gray; not a soul stirred.
         Lately it seems I can’t stop thinking. And the more I think, the more my thoughts drift to you. Each day is filled with this sad, desperate nostalgia. I try to put it down, suppress it, but it comes back in lingering waves, overpowering me.
         I don’t suppose that dwelling on the past is a healthy way to go on, but dwell on it I do. A sad belief that what was can be again haunts me. Every time I try to concentrate, to focus myself, I just keep wandering back to you.
         I gaze listlessly out the window at the monotonous vista. Out on the street there is a couple holding each other close and simply talking on a bench. They don’t see the world around them, the cars driving by, the people walking past. Their whole world consists of each other, of existing entirely within the shrine to Perfection who sits before them.
         The sight of this pair has the effect of a cold, steely blade, piercing me down to my core. As I sit with these pangs of grief and sorrow running through me, my memory drifts back to another couple in times past.
         We barely knew each other then, the both of us just recently acquainted. I sat apart from you, just another trivial face in the crowd. You had your own concerns in life, and I had mine; each too preoccupied to fit in anything more.
         How it happened exactly? Well, time has been a rough cloth over my mind, polishing and fading those events that once stood so clear, those that once made my heart race and my spirit leap. Now all that remains from over the years is a montage of colors, smells, sounds. Jumbled scenes come to the surface: a quaint café, a spilled coffee, an embarrassed me, a shy yet patient you, awkward, timid conversation, an offer to walk you home, and you, so innocent, so trusting, accepting my babbled proposal with a blush and a smile.
         After that, my world was alive, saturated with color, every day filled with more beauty and sunshine than my soul deserved, bursting at the seams with the incredible awe, the disbelief that you were there with me when I turned around, when I opened the door, when I looked through the crowd. And there you would be, clearly distinguished from those meaningless masses as if you were the single bright blooming rose growing among the shambling grass that served as your backdrop. The world was good.
         And then... and then... and then, it all just stopped. Suddenly, I would be reading my newspaper at that quaint café, and would look up quickly to hear what you had asked, only to find that no one was there before me anymore. Then a sledgehammer would smash into me deep inside, making me double over with pain and a torturous flood of realization: my shrine had disappeared, that temple in which I had so often found comfort was lost.
         And this happened again and again, each time with more memories of the past coming back than before: of ice cream at the boardwalk; of deep discussions on Nietzsche and Socrates, Fitzgerald and Hemingway over mugs of coffee; of laughter in amusement parks; of comfort in the dark times, and, most of all, of shared joy in the bright times.
         Remembering us hurt; it still does. When I compare the shining happy days we had together, to that existence I now find myself in with dreary cold streets and drab edifices, I’m at a loss. What happened? More importantly, why? There is no answer to my lonesome inquiries. Only the constant drizzle that fills my world now day after day seems to acknowledge my pleas for understanding with a simple shrug and a whisper of a promise that this dreary life of mine shall trudge on. It does not allow me to go back and search for my answers. No, I can only glance wistfully back over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of you in the distance.
         And as I turn each time to stop and stare back the way I’ve come, a desperate hope always rises up, pleading me to find some small sign of you again: a coffee cup lying in the road, a folded newspaper sprawled along the gutter, a coat whipping around the corner, anything, ANYTHING that offers some spark of life again.
         Yet my world has moved on, whether I have wished it or not. I get up from that same old table, leave the same change, and take one last look at those lovers across the street, so caught up, so fully absorbed in one another’s company. And somehow my mind still plays that same old cruel trick, and for one heart-stopping second, I see your face again, observing that same care-free couple from a table on the other side of this café, and remembering us as well.