They dreamed everyday.
The boy would say, "You start."
The girl would say, "Okay, we're in Boston and it's beautiful" because that’s how she always started her dreams.
Then the boy would say, "Our duplex overlooks the ocean and it always smells like incense and you've got a room for writing with big bay windows and I've got a studio and it's just like you imagined your first everything to be.”
"We stay up late on our rooftop and look out at the skyline. It’s how perfect would feel like if it existed,” the girl would say.
"You're putting on your makeup because we're going to see one of our favorite Indie bands tonight, Glass Houses, in some small pub. And we'll go dancing and be so alive and so careless."
"We're catching a train to Canada at midnight" she smiled, "to the cabin in the woods."
Sometimes he would wake her up, "We're sailing on the bluest water, in a small wooden boat. It's nighttime. We talk about stars-are they made of fire or of something more beautiful?"
She said, "This reminds me of us." (You and I, we're not tied to the ground, not falling but rising like rolling around, eyes closed above the rooftops, eyes closed, we're gonna spin through the stars, our arms wide as the sky, we're gonna ride the blue all the way to the end of the world, to the end of the world).
Where are we tonight, the girl would whisper.
Iceland.
Amsterdam.
Brazil.
New Zealand.
He would tell her.
Where are we going, the girl would ask.
Anywhere.
Everywhere.
Let’s never stop dreaming. Promise me.
I promise you.
Say it.
Say what?
We’ll never stop.
We’ll never stop.
He would tell the girl:
We’re in our cabin and it’s Christmas. You’ve decorated it so beautifully. I take you outside, with my hands over your eyes. I tell you, open your eyes and I lift my hands off them at the same moment. When you open them all you can see is all the trees in our yard, the ones that have lost their leaves, wrapped up in lights. I remember you told me that they looked lonely, I tell you. You say, things like this make me believe in God all over again. You say, let’s not talk anymore. So I don’t. You walk out beneath the trees, touching the places where the bark is exposed and if someone saw you at that moment they’d call you beautiful. The truth is, it’s nice to just be places where you are.
She would tell the boy:
We walk to the ski lodge later and I ask one of the lift operators to turn a lift on. He picks, Cambria Pass, the one that runs up through the mountains at night. It’s so easy to sit there with you, on some three-passenger chair lift, of course it is. You say, I can see our house from here. I recite a passage from my favorite book to you. I say, “Love me because love doesn’t exist and I have tried everything that does.” I’m wearing that sweater we bought in Ireland. You’ve got on some kind of hat with fur. Our life these days seems like a blank notebook, the kind with cream-colored paper, or like the flimsy opaqueness that accompanies every Antarctic night, right before the Aurora Borealis.
While sailing along the Mediterranean Coast he told her:
If someone asked me about this moment, I would say, it was the greatest.
Somewhere in Romania she told him:
Nothing will ever be as great as you can imagine it to be.
In Cairo, he whispered, while tossing pebbles into the Nile:
Except for this.
During intermission at the Paris Opera, she confided:
You make my feet lighter.
Before diving off a waterfall in Australia he assured her:
I’ll come back up and do it again with you.
And so they dreamed, as most people dream yet they lived, as most people never get a chance to live.
One day, while walking down an imaginary street together, the boy looked at the girl. He wondered why she always swung her hands so quickly.
She was looking for a bookstore.
He asked her:
Would you like some coffee? How many sugars? Cream?
She asked him:
Would you like a book? Genre? Length?
They took the same street and went different directions. It was like this: the being together and then suddenly having the need to be alone. The balance that was so hard to achieve. The complete unity that could form and mold itself into any shape but somehow evaded them both.
Somewhere in Alaska the girl told the boy:
I’m tired of travel. No matter where I go, myself always follows me.
On a pier in Japan as she threw the remains of a letter into the Pacific:
There are three classifications of people in my life: friends, lovers or nothing.
Rewind to another imaginary adventure in Israel. They strolled the narrow streets and shade from the olive trees splashed on their faces. The boy prayed and told jokes the girl wrote in that journal she was always scribbling in. They lay with the sand hot on their backs.
Fast forward to their pilgrimage to India. She bought kabobs from a street vendor. They ate them in front of the beautiful Hindu temple. He whistled some Beatles song and she sang, “Little darling it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darling it’s been years since you’ve been here.” She was wearing an electric purple sari. He sang back, “Here comes the sun, do do do, here comes the sun. And I say it’s alright.”
Pause their sabbatical in Madagascar. He dared her to eat it. She said, let’s both take a bite. The truth is, it wasn’t that bad and the locals laughed. He announced that he was going swimming. She said she would be back in a little while, because she would be looking for seashells. Later, they built a fire and simultaneously wondered why it seemed that there were always more stars in exotic places than in the city. Oscar Wilde came to her mind and she said, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Play their journey in Italy. They danced in the piazza and then he pushed her into the fountain. She laughed as she said; you’ve ruined my dress. Smiling as she pulled him in along with her, but not as bad I just ruined your shirt. She put her arm in the crook of his as the walked through St. Peter’s Basilica. They strained their necks together from looking at Michelangelo’s ceilings for so long. They had the best meal and stumbled upon a tango street festival. Dimly lit with tea lights the ancient cobble stoned street had sparkled with the scent of Chanel, the girl would later insist. They watched, entranced, as what had formerly been only gondoliers and waitresses flounced and twirled, dipped and touched in a manner that the boy would later describe as, ephemeral and earnest.
While eating at a seaside café in Madrid the girl confessed:
I just want to be one of those interesting old people when I grow up. You know, someone that people want to sit next to at parties. Someone who makes a lasting impression. I want to leave a party with the knowledge that someone will be going home and telling anyone who will listen that they just met the most captivating person in the world.
In front of Buckingham Palace the boy told one of the guards:
You’re awfully serious.
In the Hall of Mirrors she mused:
I’m just as lonely as Marie Antoinette.
In the midst of the Kalahari Desert he quoted:
“Have I found you flightless bird, American mouth?”
Somewhere in Montana the boy told the girl:
You’re free. He reminded her to breathe, breathe, shh, shh, just breathe. Just go, the boy whispered. Run. Make your great escape. Hurry and be quick now. Yes, here are your train tickets. No, I don’t know where you’re going but you’re going, that’s enough for now. I can’t go with you. Please, no tears. No arguments. Just leave. You’re free; I’m setting you free. Yes, I put you in first class. Here’s your luggage. Yes, I packed your jewels and your Hermes scarves. No, you look wonderful. Here let me fix it. Let me carry your things for you. I’m not all that good at this, sorry.
At the final destination after years of the in between, staring at the painting after months of preliminary sketches and mixing colors, staying awake until the break of dawn after years of never being able to. That was what saying goodbye was for them. Intangible.
He told her, here’s your coat.
He told her, your plane leaves in forty-two minutes.
He told her, you’re like some great book that I keep misplacing.
She said, thank you for everything.
She said, I don’t think I’ll remember much.
She said, please read e.e cummings before you die.
Rewind to their last night in Denmark as she handed him a red tulip:
“Here is the deepest secret no one knows. Here is the root of the root. Here is the bud of the bud, in the sky of a tree called life. I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.”
Fast forward to a crowded bazaar in some foreign place:
A not so young girl collides with a not so young boy.
She spills the papers she was carrying.
He drops his coffee and his newspaper.
She looks up. She crinkles her forehead.
He pushes his glasses back up his nose.
The not so young girl smiles and it is the best smile.
Then she says, the truth about forever is…
She stops midsentence; she’s crying.
Her knees were scraped.
The laces of her Oxford’s were untied.
Her hair hung in loose wisps around her face.
The not so young boy says, oh, it’s you.
His white shirt is stained with coffee.
He hasn’t shaved in a while.
He thinks, of course it’s her.
Then he says for her, the truth about forever is that it isn’t forever.
Pause.
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