I agreed, and you hung up, and I cried.
I knew what you didn't, about the locket and the key.
How the locket had held a scrap of poem we'd cherished, and held it still
dented beyond opening by the wild bite of another momentary lover, many long roads before
How the key had been lost, somewhere between a bus terminal and an airport
or between a rusty car and a long-distance rig
or between a cross-city transit express and another busy terminal
somewhere in the long separation...
...somewhere...
So I stood with the tatters of my pride around my feet
looking at the phone in silent grief
knowing that there was such a long story to tell
and that it was too late -
it would never be told.
For I'd been away
and you'd stayed in the same place
and I could never now speak words that held meaning for you
and you could never now hear me.
And that, more than anything, sealed the direction of our paths.
I took the locket, dents and all, and rode for the bridge.
It was hard to stand there.
I waited, and looked at the passing water -
"..just so much water under the bridge..."
I knew we were going to repeat a long-lived pattern.
I waited.
I imagined your face when I gave you the dented locket
and imagined you tossing it away
over and out and into the distance
gone from sight.
I waited.
I thought of all the things I could say about the missing key
and pared them down until there could be no misunderstanding
and discarded some, and thought twice about others
and I waited.
I thought of all that we were, all that we had been, come to this one moment
etched in so much sadness
and miscommunication
and I waited.
Finally I rode to the nearest phone box
looking over my shoulder all the while in case I missed you
for that would be an unforgivable ending betwen us.
For all that we had been, for all that I'd done
for any honour I had left
I had to meet you.
But you hadn't come.
I called your house.
You'd been gone over an hour and a half.
You should have been there by now.
I left a message, saying that I'd been here and waited
but I hadn't seen you.
Then, I rode home, ragged ends tearing at me
whipped through my hair by the wind.
Later that afternoon you rang
and if your voice had seemed wild before it was nothing to now
and you told me with as much bite as you could summon what you'd planned
for that meeting where we hadn't met.
I didn't tell you I'd known your plans,
but accepted the savagery
the words that cut and tore at my spirit.
I accepted the accusations of honourlessness -
while unfounded in my actions that day (I'd been there, after all),
I accepted them for the sake of truths you never knew of
I listened to your hatred
given force by righteousness
and I knew there was nothing salvageable left
and I grieved
to myself.
You hung up on me.
I let you.
It seemed a fitting end
to the unbridgeable chasm between us
that we had waited to meet each other
on different bridges.