a relic
Written three, four years ago:
“It was in wintertime, before the Christmas tree goes up and we can still have fires in the fireplace. That would make it about late November, then. I would come home really late from work those days. It was cold outside, not as cold as it gets up there in Idaho, but bitterly cold to the south. It had been one of those days when I was walking, and the wind just picked up and blew right through me. It happened late at night — there were a few overhead lights; all the shops along the street were closed, shutters closed and locked against the cold. I had a big overcoat on that wasn’t doing much. As the wind picked up and took my breath away, I was just overwhelmed by an immense feeling of longing; I don’t know what or who for, I just knew I was longing. It was the kind of feeling that makes you just reach up instinctively and turn up your collar and narrow your eyes, especially in the coldness. I drove home later that night, got home about 11:30. The rest of the family had long since gone to bed. The house was dark when I got back; not even a porchlight greeted me. It took my key a while to find the keyhole; then I remembered it was unlocked. My mind was obviously somewhere else that night. I walked in and shut the door as quietly as I could (which still wasn’t very quiet) took off my coat, and sat down on the couch. The only lights in the house were a little light we keep lit in the kitchen at night, and the glowing embers from the fire, which hadn’t been tended to for hours, but still kept up a low red glow, like a lava lamp, and radiated a subtle warmth. I stared at the smoldering fire for a while, thinking nothing at all. Then I went upstairs, put my pj’s on, gathered my cd player, and came downstairs again. It was just something about that night in particular. I sat down right in front of the fire, hearing an occasional sizzle or low pop from the embers and feeling the warmth through the almost-flannel of my pj’s. I put on Duncan Sheik, and listened to those two songs, for some reason. It made me long for someone in my life more than almost anything had before. I just fantasized about sitting on the couch in front of the fire; no lights in the room save the fire itself. The music I listened to would be on the cd player. We would just be holding each other, and at the point in Days Go By where he says, ‘in your own experience / have you ever known tenderness / …like this’ I would kiss her very very delicately and carefully, yet with a veiled abandon…”