I almost believe you’re real
He was larger than life and had this power about him, an aura of command which he shrugged off, yet it was there, whirling in a circle like a cloak around him. His hands shook because he was nervous and he hadn’t owned that power, yet it came in the door with him. He could not deny it because it was primal and everyone felt it. That was why we were drawn to him.
He rests now by the window. I see woodland behind him and indigo skies in his eyes. He thinks of me (I imagine) as I think of him. Between us pass unrequited years, vortexes of secrets and lies.
His head rests on a closed first. I would like to stretch out and run my fingers through the fringe that hangs from that inclined head, but I can’t. His eyes are intent on me, never wavering and there’s the beginnings of a smile that will never come. There’s a living energy and intensity between us when we allow our eyes to just gaze. Even in a room full of people, I’d let my eyes linger on his. I imagine he’d do the same with a slight smile. But for now, he’s there, where he always is, in his black shirt, sitting by his desk inside the picture frame.
I can see part of his bookshelves, books tipping this way and that, his oft thumbed Tolkien leans on Tolstoy and Chambers dictionary stands stout. Around him swirls his emperor consciousness, big and still expanding ever since the day that I lost him to death’s white-knuckle grip.
This house and his things in particular are full of the resonance of the newly dead. I sigh at my uneaten sandwich. Not eating is probably at least partly responsible for my newly found mental lightness and clarity, but not wholly. Does the otherworld speak to the grieving? This and other questions I am forced to ponder.
‘You were lucky,’ they said.
Luck! I don’t believe in it. And there are no accidents as far as I’m concerned. So what happened that day? I wait for him to sigh his answer through the picture on my desk.
