The Fjord’s Pearl

I hate that I’m waiting for you.

In my thoughts, you swim in the shimmering waves of the fjord. It’s as if you’ve dived beneath the surface—I can picture it in my mind. Your fiery curls, clinging to your soft face.

We kissed, not just on the platform, but this was what became our last—even though we had met only hours before. You veiled them with your simple beauty, your white smile—I’m certain you’d stolen it from the waning moon. But now the moon has regained its full strength and shines through my “blackout” curtains—perhaps it’s not only the light that keeps me awake.

I know I have no right to miss you—we didn’t even really know each other. Not really. I knew what you did for a living, of course; such things are easily shared over coffee. During dinner, we peeled back another layer, and I learned just enough about you to lean in and kiss you. Your soft lips are seared into my memory, and the joy of that day has turned into a thorn in my side.

How could I have summoned the courage to let you go? We both missed a train each as we stood there, mending our hearts. I’d still be standing there, a year later, if you hadn’t been the grown-up between us and told me I had to catch the next one—and so I did.

I still wait, even though the fjord has long since frozen over—for you to break through the surface, searching for me, and pull me under—back to the day we met, and embrace me in the most beautiful place on earth, on that platform.

This time, I will be the grown-up, follow you onto the train, all the way home. Where the days melt under the sun’s glow and paint your hair the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen. Where we can rediscover a child’s unfeigned delight in the simplest things—like the warmth of the sun itself, which would curl our skin and fade it to a lovely gray tone.

You do know what you gave up?

Perhaps it was shrouded by the gray veil you explained hung over you.

In all the endless, dark-veiled days since, I’ve thought of nothing else. My entire burning heart chose us, while the graywater filled your beautiful head. How I wish I could kiss it away, but the plague has embraced me too. Her twin shadow, who stalks me in my half-waking nightmares, has finally found her footing in the waking world and agreed to no less than room and board in exchange for the work of stealing my peace of mind—a deal she intends to honor until the day I see life’s true worth. The day when all fades into darkness.

Some days, I want to run down to the platform, leave my apartment door open—for what does it matter now? My traveling friends would, of course, understand and clear the way.

But that would be wrong—even I know it, hopeless as I am.

You live in your own world now—in the graywater. Perhaps it has lightened to a sky blue? But I can only wonder and hope. Now I swallow my pride, as I turn my back on the blue fjord—may it freeze until late spring wishes it thawed again.

I hope you dream down there—free from plague, graywater, and the pain that made you let me go. I can cry a wish that the smile you gave after I kissed you for the first time is the same one resting beneath the ice, warming your freckled face, eternally white.