Accumulation

Every now and then you come to mind, out of the blue, without me planning on it or wishing for it, neither as a punch in the gut nor as a sudden stab of inner pain, more like the subtle scent of petrichor slowly caressing my senses while I walk on the street and come across a particularly shaped tree whose form you would have smiled and pointed at, both of us stopping for a moment to gaze at it in spite of the upcoming storm, the chilly winds and darkening clouds breathing down our necks as a perennial reminder of the short-lived peace we were never able to extend beyond some dimly lit afternoons at the movies or the fragile instants of careful sincerity and long midnight phone calls in bed, dancing around our impulses with the grace of a log and the looming trail of confusion and regret, two emotions that still creep up my hands like at that concert when you grabbed my waist giving me both protection and distress, another example of our elastic push-and-pull whose ending I could never tell, weary of the impending explosion that was sometimes replaced with kindness and something else, a discreet spark of affection that would first graze my heart and put its pieces back in place only to be thrown to the void with your unsaid words stacked on its back and making me silently beg for the warmth of your face or one ear of solace, the one and only trail that escapes me whenever I close my eyes and still see you standing in front of me, maybe across the street, or as a shadow at the back of the cinema, both of us projecting our memories from afar to relieve ourselves of this, the accumulated possibilities of an unshared life I walked away from not because of fear or pride, but out of grief and my sudden wish to once again smile.