Their Bench In Bath (Reprise)
I wonder where they are now. Still on their bench? Maybe.
I've been thinking about them in the ebullience of civil twilight, in the twilight waining. The Blues obtruding my eyesight. There's a quality of love that carries a specific spice of deception. Setting sails by nautical twilight, setting sails in the last six degrees of the day, setting out for home, setting out on waters uneven and shifting. Buoys cloaked in the dimness of astronomical twilight. Vision shuttered, eyes peering through a darkness replete with all that follows. What stage of the day's last remaining light do they find themselves under?
I still feel her fingers tangled in his hair and the smile he shined on her as if the sun would never set, as if their bench in Bath was the only place they would ever need again. The wheels of time captured, held underneath his thumb, pressing down, pushing it further. He was not the first man to try, but maybe he was the first to succeed. The square at the feet of the Abbey had never seen a love more true. Through all that she had borne witness to, there was never a Roman less brutish, never had a romance played out quite the way theirs did. Suffusing in the cobblestones, melting into the cracks, and grateful that a love like theirs could be so open. Their's did not hide from prying eyes or the pressures of modern times.
Deception? He who can be deceived is the man who knows love in its purest form. It takes two to compile and meet conditions. While earnest and honest, my perspective was but that, a perspective, a view, an observation. I want to track them down to confirm my original thesis, my contention that love never leaves even if the other person does. How much space exists inside a chest? Can one condense love to a gas and mold it to the margins? How can a heart keep contact if there is nothing there to feel? Is love more akin to a scar? Is love a permanent marker? How does one remove it? It can't be done by chemical; the compounds dye and set, rooting themselves in ever deeper. Deeper past the epidermis, past the veins and the blood that fills them. Can one fall out of it? I've heard the concept, but I question the claim's validity. Are we always in love once it is felt?
Is our young couple still holding their bench in Bath, or are they colliding, creating new love with another? Maybe that's the mystery we carry. Maybe we're all a mystery, even to ourselves. We try our best to grapple with long division and we try our best to leave no remainder.
———
They are in love, a love so blatant a blind man can see it. A specific heat radiates from them like the sun smashing rays into your skin on a warm June day. Near the Roman Baths, York cuts across Kingston and Church Street, creating a square at the feet of the Abbey. They sit across from me in the courtyard, my eye-line one of the congruent diagonals. Candid in view, reminded of life's great imperative: live is meant to be lived, and love is meant to be had.
She runs her hand through his hair in a delight so serene I think they may fornicate in the square, oblivious to decency laws and utterly unaware of the public surrounding them. In a bubble, the outside world is of little importance; nothing much matters outside their bench in Bath. He holds her wrist while her hand cradles his head so gently, her fingers crawling up behind his right ear. His eyes are shooting a look so strong I think he may be able to see into her soul. His lips are moving, but I'm too far to hear the words. I imagine his lips move in an unending search for hers.
I am unsure if love ever leaves; eviction is not an option as love has perpetual squatter rights. Love sits somewhere in the center of your chest; removing it would be to remove an internal organ integral to function and expect to remain unchanged. Fighting it is useless as it always wins and always conquers its foe. It may become smaller as time passes, space carved out, making room for more. Pushing the original member toward the margin, but it is always there, always steadfast in staying put, right there at the center of your chest. You may begin to neglect it, but love never needs your attention. You didn't choose to create it; it happened in an instant and locked itself in. You have a say in the matter like you have a say in being born.
