Lily of the Valley

Somewhere, there is this little dock stretching out over a lake, where the clouds swim in the golden ripples of the rock I have skipped across its surface.

I go there sometimes, when I’ve become fed up with “the real world” and need a place to dip my feet and look up at the sky, at what really matters. There, I lose focus of you and you and damn you for sticking to the walls of my brain like a nuisance piece of gum on the underside of my shoe. When I’m with you I can’t stop thinking of being alone but when I’m alone you consume my every waking moment. The little dock I go to will always be imperfectly perfect with you in my life.

When I’m there, the seasons change constantly because I am nothing if not indecisive with what I prefer. In the fall, leaves float across the surface of the lake and cluster around the legs of the dock, and I push them around while laying on my stomach. But the fiery colors of those deciduous giants and the dropping temperatures of the lake remind me a bit too much of how you make me feel, so it switches to the first few months of the year.

Suddenly, it's spring, and I’m pushing myself up from the dock and running around the circumference of the lake through the fresh blades of grass. I blow a dandelion, the weight of my wishes resting on each fluff-covered seed. Then I’m left with only the stem, and there's too much green, too much of the color of your eyes for me to tolerate in a place where I’m supposed to forget.

It's summer, and the sun has lulled me into a false sense of complacency. I spread out on the dock, feeling every ray from the ball of fire millions of miles away seep into my unprotected skin. It feels warm, soothing, safe. It reminds me of when I saw you on the last day of school, when I wanted to simultaneously say everything that was wrong and everything that was right. Of when I walked away, recalling the shape of your lips when I first met you, knowing full well that time has warped away my memory, replacing it with a shiner, glossier portrayal of reality.

Somewhere, there is this little dock stretching out over a lake, and it has become timeless, stuck somewhere in the middle of the four seasons cycle. I visit it less often now. When I do, though, I no longer think too much of the reds and the greens and the cold. Instead, apples grow in abundance in late summer, glistening from trees, their sweet scent hanging over the lake like a sickly longing for something new, better. In the spring, I cradle the little white blossoms that carry your name, and finally, that gum on the outsole of my shoe has worn away, leaving only a slight mar on where it had clung.