The Streetlamp That Was She

There was something romantic in the way my mother dried bedsheets. She would hang them up along the stairway railing, where the sun hit the second floor just right, and it didn’t take long for the fresh, almost citrussy aroma of detergent to spread down the halls and into closed-off spaces that were our rooms. If one were to pass those sheets, one could not help but be reminded of something they couldn’t quite determine. The bedding spread along the wood, and a mirror for the golden rays held an odd, romantic feel of melancholy. Melancholy over some intimately familiar place with curtains just like those white sheets, swaying slowly back and forth with its partner’s, the wind’s, summer breath, and reaching out for the simple furniture with a warm sigh, as if in yearning. Intimately familiar. Achingly familiar. Curtains throwing shadows along her legs, arms, back. The clean scent of her hair, skin, neck. The summer breeze, catching in her slept-in curls and dancing leisurely across her cheeks, lips, nose. Eyes. As if in yearning. As if in yearning.

Her leg was, per usual, hung over the window sill in her bedroom, feet bare and thighs exposed to the scorching heat of the afternoon that we would hide from each summer back then. She let out a quiet groan and rolled over in an almost kittenish manner, stretching out slowly, limb by limb. “I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow. How stupid is that?”

“It is stupid. So stupid.” I let out a heavy sigh, for it was; stupid. A month wasn’t enough. Two months wouldn’t have been enough either. Hell, a year wouldn’t have been enough, I thought.

She pressed her cheek to the pillow and I felt her eyes burning into the side of my face. “What if you–”

“You’ve asked me that three times in the past hour, you know I can’t.”

“Fourth time’s a charm.”

I let out a snort and glanced at her grinning complexion through one eye, keeping the other closed. “My parents would never let me.”

She hummed quietly in response and scooted closer, tapping her foot against mine and I felt her smile as she dropped her lips to my shoulder. “We could run away.”

“Oh, yes.” I nodded slowly, a bemused smile pulling at my lips, my fingers running through the ends of her tangled hair. The knots broke down with each gentle pull. “We could run away, join a pirate ship or some shit.”

“I think you’d be a sexy pirate. A golden tooth, and all.” She laughed and nodded, moving onto her back and dropping her head to my stomach with a wide grin. “Or we could go to Hawaii, open a cocktail bar. We would never serve underage girls.” She raised an eyebrow at me with a knowing look.

“Oh, never, like they never serve us. Because that would be illegal and completely unprofessional and shameful and we’d never be those underage girls.”

She scoffed. “Oh, never. Never ever.”

“Underage drinking is a horrible thing. We should seriously spread more awareness around it. Smoking, too.” I nodded and reached over to her bedside, taking the neatly stored cigarettes from it and lighting one between my lips with a scoff. “It’s a serious thing.”

“Such a serious thing.” She nodded, laughed, and stretched her arm up to me, wiggling her fingers in search of the cigarette.

It was the year before that she kissed me for the first time. It was dark, the sun had just set beneath the then only slightly lit horizon. It must’ve been easier for her to do, there, in the dark.

She sat against the sand, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. She then slowly folded them beneath herself, her gaze remaining on the barely visible waves. “I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow. How stupid is that?”

“It is stupid. So stupid.” I nodded. The weeks of August passed by much too fast. Each year faster, it seemed. Like a yellowish blur; lemons, tan legs, tan lines, freckles, houses aglow, the sun against the ocean’s surface, against the pebbles under drunken feet.

She tutted. We both stayed silent. Comfortably so. She was a comfortable silence. “I wish we could stay here, like this–” I saw her nod through the corner of my eye. “Just like this, you know? A little tipsy, a little tired, a little bored. To forget school and people who aren’t us, I could easily live like this.” She nodded again as if agreeing to her own words.

I did know. “You’d get bored with me.” I laughed and dropped my cheek to her bare shoulder. It was warm and burnt from the hours in the sun, and the salty crystals poked my cheek.

“And you’d get bored with me, that’s fine.” She shrugged with a laugh.

I wouldn’t have. “I wouldn’t, I don’t think so.” I answered with a shake of my heavy head, my eyes now closed.

“You wouldn’t.” She laughed again.

We stayed so. Silent. Comfortable. A little tipsy. A little tired. A little bored. Her hand slowly found her way to mine, like a deer’s snout reaching towards the feeder’s opened palm, carefully. I thought I felt her hold her breath. I slid my fingers between hers, my eyes remaining tightly closed. She would so often hold my hand while leading me from one shop to another through the narrow streets that were echoing heat, while stepping into the coldness of the ocean in the morning, while running to catch the last bus back to our town, so why, why did it suddenly feel so new? Filled with some kind of profoundness, her touch had never sent through the nerves of my hand before? Then, her hand lifted, mine with it, to her lips. Her breath was warm and calm against my knuckles, her lips touching them softly. Once she felt my fingers twitch, she pulled away slightly, scarcely, and once she felt the heftiness of my hand still in hers, she kissed it again. And again. Repeatedly. Slowly. I felt a knot form in my now tight throat, as her lips moved up my wrist, the crook of my elbow, my shoulder. Softly. Soft, like a butterfly’s landing as they found their way to mine. Salty, warm, sweet. We stayed still, inhaling each other’s shallow, nervous exhales, each other's soul, for a few moments before connecting again. Oh, to stay like this, to stay like this, just like this, I thought.

We must’ve stayed there for quite some time, for once we made our way back up the stone path, smooth from its years of living, tipsier than before, quieter than before, the moon and its stars were bright on their dark canvas. We remained silent. Our goodbye was silent, too. We had told each other all there was to tell. All there was.

From then on, the summer after, that is, it was all made of stolen kisses and silences filled with her warm touch. August had never felt quite so short before. Her family’s hotel was the one my own family had been returning to for the past decade. It was a warm yellow, lived-in palace right on the Sardinian coast; the closest beach was a three-minute walk away, and the nearest bar was right next door. It was run by a dark man, who seemed to be in heat constantly and who never hesitated to pour me and her a drink, and after the first, a few more. The both of us knew the town very well. The town knew us. Her more than me, of course, which was of tremendous help when it came to searching for hiding spots. Away from nosy tourists and even nosier inhabitants. She would drag me off to hidden rocky beaches and moist caves that flooded every night but remained refreshingly damp in the day, or up, up, up sun-dried hills that were all a golden brown. We never ran out of words, never ran out of breath, never ran out of cigarettes. Even in silent pauses, there was a mute conversation running between us, connecting through tongues and lips and pores.

It was the summer of 1980 that I first saw her. We must have been six or seven, then. Old enough to get along better than with anyone else, young enough to not yet think of it as a sin. She and I would run around the town day after day and cry relentlessly when the time for goodbye came. I remember once how her mother picked her up, pulling her arms from mine with a comforting laugh and a gentle kiss, wiping her daughter’s tears as she pouted at me past the motherly shoulder.

It was the year of 1991 that my father expressed the idea of spending the summer on a different island. He told my mother and me that while the location was heavenly, he wished to explore other hidden paradises that we hadn’t seen before. My mother agreed. My word didn’t matter much, and my sullen mood, which was truly caused by a bleeding heart that summer, was blamed on my eighteen-year-old hormones.

It was the summer of 1993, three years since I had seen her last, that my father came to terms with the only true paradise on earth, our Sardinian beach, and we returned.

There was a group of obnoxious Americans staying in the room next to ours, and my evenings were filled with their laughter, loud “alrights” and “what's ups”. We went to greet the owners of the hotel as we usually did each year; we brought them homely delicacies as a silent apology for our unfaithfulness, and they accepted us with open arms as if we were long-lost sons. She was not there. And I felt it then, a small crack, as if a thread that had been unravelling for quite some time, finally found its end.

I made my way down the darkening street that same eve, the cooling and rocky surface familiar against my sandals. I walked in an odd kind of trance, as if entering a dream that had been dreamt before, half in search of a curly head of hair, half in utter hopelessness. And then, as if I had gotten pinched, I heard her name being shouted across the street. I turned to look in the direction of the voice and then in the direction of a running sound. I could have saved myself the time it took me to turn my head, for the sound of her walking was as familiar to me as her face. She ran across the street with booming laughter, ethereal, more so than ever before, and towards the shouting boy. With a wide grin, he opened his arms for her, and she took the offer with a smiling kiss. She didn’t seem to notice me. Oh, to get away, to get away, to just get away, I thought.

I found her eyes in the coming days, quite a few times. The first time, the chocolate in them seemed to consist of surprise and thoughts unbeknownst to me. Her head rested against the same boy’s shoulder, tan and strong and nothing like mine. Nothing like mine. Nothing like me.

Then it went on like this, just like this, for the rest of my stay there, silent and stolen and avoidant. My parents asked me about the lack of her often, and I thought about the lack of her all the time.

It was a particularly warm night when the curtains, white like sheets in the pearly moonlight, moved under her hands as she stepped out of the night onto my bed under the open window. I gazed up at her, her tear-stained cheeks glowing like summer itself, and her lips dropped to mine with a whisper that was meant for me to swallow. “I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow. How stupid is that?”

“It is stupid. So stupid.” I swallowed.

She left me there in the early morning, silently, for the last time.

My father once told me, on one of our peaceful movie nights that came unplanned but upon some telepathic and silent agreement, that the reasoning behind life moving faster each year was routine. I had started the conversation by pointing out the strange passing of time lately.

He told me: “Do you remember how much longer each car ride took when you were younger? Even those you now consider quick seemed hours long, no?” He raised that bushy eyebrow that he had, unfortunately, passed down to me. “That was because it was all new. You had only started experiencing it all. May that be the streetlamp down the street, foggy car windows in the late evening, a first proper meal instead of a Happy Meal– It was all so fresh, so new. And now,” He shrugged and took his glasses from the leather case on the coffee table, “now that you can’t get enough of it, life, it’s already settled into a routine. It consists of your knowledge, your experiences– you already know the look of a streetlamp, y’know?”

I thought about his words the rest of the evening and Rocky Balboa on screen didn’t do it for me as he would’ve the night before.

Had it been there the whole time? All those summers? What a waste, I thought, what a waste. Had I been blind to the look of a streetlamp because of its casual closeness, its comfortable familiarity? Perhaps, its light shone too bright for my eyes to remain on it, its flame burnt too close to my skin and I chose to throw on a thicker sweater. But it never turned dark. I never broke it, even when the agonizing burn left scarring on my spirit, for it kept the gloomy street safe in dark times. Safe when the night fell and when the sombre clouds tucked the moon into their soft curves, away from mortal eyes. So I stood underneath it many nights, many days, many years. Sometimes it would flicker, sometimes it would darken, but never would it extinguish.