Smoke Clouds
When I type your name into Facebook this morning, there are hundreds of profiles and all of them could be you. Their faces stare back at me from across the world, hopeful.
Have I got the spelling right? Did your last name have a ‘t’ after the ‘s’? Did your first name have two ‘r’s or just one? It’s hard to know.
As I scroll, I wonder if I’d even recognise you, after all this time— 20 years to the day. You’d be a man now. Maybe you’d be grey. Maybe you’d have children, or a wife who makes your eyes splinter at the edges, like when you laughed at my stupid jokes.
I hear my own kids calling me to wake up, to make breakfast, to start the day, so I stop. Later, I hear my husband’s heavy work boots trailing mud through the door.
But as soon as the dishes are in the sink, the benches swiped clean and everyone’s asleep, I can’t help it. I look for you again.
The faces blur down the screen. Green eyes or blue or maybe hazel. I don’t know. It’s been too long since we met at the train station, after school — a love letter or a rose in your backpack. Your brown hair catching sunlight and turning blonde. My memories of us are always summer and freckles and salty cheeks.
You’d put your hand on my knee, freshly shaven, suburbs rushing past. Sometimes we’d miss our stop but it didn’t matter. All we could see was each other. You’d kiss me, tickle fingertips up my school dress and walk me home. Nobody had ever looked at me the way you did. And nobody has, ever since.
I remember you saved the sheets when we first had sex, wrapped them away in your dresser. You were sentimental about those things, like me. You had a secret shoebox under your bed with all the cards I’d ever written, keepsakes from all the dates we’d ever been on, all the places we’d ever seen.
When we broke up you told me you burned the box and watched the smoke curl up into the stars and leave forever.
Still, I wonder if you think about me too. If we’re sitting at opposite ends of the screen, in the dark, searching for each other while our families are sleeping.
I comb through Instagram, LinkedIn. Nothing. I think I must be getting something wrong. Every person looks different. Lives in places I can’t imagine, does work I’m sure you never liked. I know what I have to do. I recite a string of numbers— your numbers, somehow still memorised. I could text you. I could say: ‘hello… it’s me’.
I don’t know why, or what for. But I do it anyway.
Too quickly, you reply and want to meet me, now. It’s strange, I think. You still live nearby. Near the old station.
So I sneak out, like a jittery teenager, chewing down fistfuls of mints that get stuck between my teeth and make me cough.
I get there early and stand in the shadows, hidden, at the top of the ramp, so I can see you coming. I notice graffiti on the old green metal seats, where I used to sit on your lap. We planned our whole damn lives on this platform. Shot babies and marriage and dreams down the tracks.
After a while, I see a tall figure walking toward me— broad shoulders, square jaw. I think it might be you, but as he darts under yellow lights through the turnstile, I see he’s only a kid. He looks like you did when we were in school, only he isn’t you. He’s too skinny. His eyes don’t shine like yours did. I watch him take a seat. He squashes our ghosts down through the slats and waits for the late train, alone.
I don’t stay.
I hurry back down the ramp knowing no one else is coming, this late. Knowing I was stupid.
Who keeps their number from high school, anyway? I think the person who replied must have been an asshole. Someone who likes to play practical jokes on lonely housewives on a Monday night. I hope they got their laugh, at least.
I’m running so fast, I trip. I tumble into the carpark, wide and empty, except for the blue skips.
When I roll over on my back, defeated, I can see the Milky Way and I remember what you told me, 20 years ago now. All that’s left of what we were are smoke clouds, curling up toward the stars, never coming down. And I think you’re right to have done it. Maybe finding you would only ruin what little residue of us was left. Maybe it’s better this way.
As I fumble for the keys, I feel my cheeks are wet, salty from tears that taste like summer.
I turn back toward the station, a final look, but no one is there.
The boy is gone now, even though I never heard the train that must have picked him up and taken him away. So quiet, it slipped past me like a person I once loved. Or a name I couldn’t quite remember how to spell.
