Sunday

Hand in hand, we would walk in happy silence

In a familiar park

On a familiar day

With a familiar feeling of condensed reverence for each other

I, the one in the messy blonde curls and pink corduroy

And he in his comfortably characteristic flannel shirt and jeans

Each covered with their own fine patina of sap and the smell

Of freshly cut wood.

Weekends are never enough time

Enough time to get dirty

Or sing

Or play

Or say hello

Or hug goodbye.

It is not the courts or some grudging obligation which puts us here;

It is merely the fact that I think I love him more than

Anything in the world

And I know that he loves me infinitely as much;

And the time we are allowed by the obligatory grudges and the courts

To spend together is what we share the most excitement for,

Because that’s how best friends are.

Fade to today and it is he who is walking the park alone-

Now in clothing which is unfamiliar to me-

His hair thinner, his gait slower and his eyes weary

I don’t know where I am in this picture.

Perhaps far away, worrying or laughing

Or maybe trying to be adult;

All those things he had once put on hold for me

I am now using to keep myself away from him.

Weekends were never enough time,

So I stopped saying hello

So I wouldn’t have to hug goodbye.

And he simply smiles with the memory of what I used to be

And continues without me,

As I continue far away without him.

But I am not smiling.

Somehow,

I slipped free from his gentle grasp since those days of the pink corduroy,

And now, I am scrambling to find that park, those jeans

That love

Before they are simply an irretrievable and un-traceable picture

In my slowly crowding memory

Of two people who I never remember knowing –

A man and his only real possession of worth –

A wide-eyed, blonde-haired package of energy and

Innocent love –

His daughter

Hand in hand

Because with love

Goodbye is just a prelude to another hello.