Things Unsaid

I have clothes that I reclaimed from the antique store that we might have worn. That time stole from us and relatives hawked. That grandkid, perhaps, who had no affinity for decency, even as a child. But they again hang in the bedroom closet as perhaps they once did before waiting for the occasion to be worn. I have records that we might have played that I listen to often, music we danced to on a gramophone that is somewhat like the one that was in once in our parlor. 

I know it was brandy that we drank, splashed with vanilla. I can hear you laugh in the euphoria of the drink, your eyes slightly glazed. I can hear the glass decanter touch the rims of the crystal glasses as I pour them and you say foul things about Woodrow Wilson on the account of your brother before dismissing politics in favor of love - a welcomed trade. A duck horn blares out in the street and we are thankful it isn't company to entertain because tonight we want to be alone. And you call me your star sweeper, a lyric from a song I've long forgotten but whose melody haunts me in your lovely voice. 

The flowers in the yard are in full bloom - roses, vibrant purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans - as we sit on the porch swing swaying in their redolence like drunk bees that have contently had our fill, the music playing through the wide-open window against a chorus of crickets. You said it is as though we have our own little orchestra through the gold glow of that window. The mosquitoes don't bother and fireflies play over the yard like embers of sleeping sun. 

You laugh at a joke I told and put your head on my shoulder and I still smell your perfumed hair faintly here, without you. On the same porch, but a different swing. In the same house but a different year. A different life. You see, I bought this house subconsciously aware that you and I once lived in it in another time, ninety years ago. I was drawn to it the way the moths are drawn to the amber-glow of the porch light. And our bare feet danced upon these hardwood floors and we made love in each of the rooms, on furniture or floor, many times over. And now I sit and reclaim pieces of our old life, memory upon memory. Slowly, piece by piece, I make the house what it once was before time, the only thing we didn't have aplenty, thieved it from us for time has no morals. 

The moon is otherwise unaltered, but everything beneath it is. I have memories, glimpses, a porch swing not as sturdy, flowers not as colorful, a house not as full, a life not as worthwhile for it is lived without you. I cannot find you in an antique store, or a catalog as I find these things herein, or a bar that claims to be a speakeasy. Perhaps, with no intent to sell it, I should put the house on the market and maybe you will subconsciously know, as I once knew, reading over the listings, that this is our house and it will always be. 

I often think of the things I never got to say to you. And sometimes I say them to myself. Or to you, as though you are here. I can fool myself just so long. They are beautiful things. Things unsaid. Where have you gone? And why have you not come home? I have planted all your favorite flowers, and I play all your favorite songs through the open windows. I tore off the vinyl siding and painted the wood your favorite color. All the lights are amber bulbs. All the doors are wood with original handles. There are candles in every room. There is so much to do and to say. I leave the porch light on and it burns for you to find your way. Please come home. This is half a house, half a life without you.