Rhapsody

//13: ballade.

 
and i'll wait for you and your pick-up truck
even though i know you'll never come.

he asked her to move,
and she glared at him.

you're blocking my view.

he looked around them,
then stared at her incredulously.

your view of what?
the ocean?

maybe.

don't you see that every day from
your house
already?
you live in that blue house there,
don't you?

yes. and yes.

so why are you sitting in the middle of the road?
go back home.

no.

he got back into his red pickup truck
and drove off,
fuming.

but she was there again the next day,
right in
the middle of the road,
and he had to pull to a stop, again,
just to avoid running over her.

honestly. this isn't safe.

so?

he didn't have a good response to that.

he left.

for the next week,
he just drove around her.

one day, though,
she wasn't there.

i still don't know why
you chose to come into the house
with walls like faded blue eyes.
but you did that day,
you did come in; and that's the reason
why i love you this way.

he found her on the back porch.

what's your name?

lairen.

i'm lowell.

okay.

you really don't care, do you?

she glared at him from over
the canvas and easel
that separated them.

stop talking to me. i'm trying to paint.

can i watch?

no.

he did anyways.

you watched intently with your blue eyes;
i wonder now i could've missed the way
they were blue as the sea outside my window?

i can't get this color right,
she grumbled to herself, irritated.

he heard her anyways.

let me.

and he took her brush, despite
her protests,
and gave her the blue of
the sea outside her window.

she stared at him and didn't say a word.
he smiled.

thanks.

no worries.

the next day you came back
with your own canvas;
and you sat down next to me.
and together for that whole august,
we painted the world.

when summer faded to fall
and she went back to school
and he went back to the mainland
she didn't see him for those months.

and she
missed
him.
even though she'd never admit it, of course.

but he came back in the winter.

i was walking along the beach
wondering how the months had flown by.
there was a grey storm brewing
in the distance. and then you came back.

he drove up that same road
in his red pickup truck;
making so much noise that he
scared away all the seagulls.

but she didn't care, and he
apologized
for having to leave,
and then
he kissed her,
and they were happy.

but time just had to get in our way,
and summer was here and
you were leaving the island again.

come with me,
he asked one night.
leave the island
with me.

she thought about the years ahead.

you've finished university, haven't you?
this was your last year?
come with me to the mainland
and we'll start a new life together.

i don't want to leave.

he stared at her.

you're staying here?

yes.

why?

i need to be near the sea.

we can live by the coast.

it's not the same ocean, lowell.

does it really matter?

yes.
it mattered so much,
but you couldn't see why;
and i suppose that's the reason
you left without me.

and i'm still here on this island alone,
still living in the house with the faded blue walls.
every day i go and sit in the middle of the road,
to watch the sea and wonder why everybody leaves.

my parents left for the mainland, too;
but of course you didn't know that.
my brother promised he wouldn't leave,
but the sea took him, in the end.

and i'll still be here forevermore,
because this is the place where i belong.
the waves and winds still sing to me,
and i'll listen to them for as long as i live.

and i'll still wait for you and your pickup truck
even though i know you'll never come.
maybe i should've told you i love you,
because now you'll never come.

taken from:
"fadingtimebytheseaside" - entry 50: a sea story.

[voyageur: august 2013]