More on the lost life...

It seems I’ve settled, however uneasily, into my life in New York. It’s a solitary one, to be sure. Maybe I’m not so settled as I hesitantly now concede. I do spot the signs of an earlier planned migration. I bought a dozen, indeed, maybe two dozen, plastic storage bins 3 years ago when I thought I might move to SF. I had someone here on a (largely illegal) sublet and had boxed up much of my books, journals and CD’s - the things I thought I might ultimately want at the ready for a cross country van trip. I went to SF for 5 months but work called me back to NYC. I never really said “no” to a move but Summer sometimes let slip she thought I had. Last year at this time she was all but resolved to move here, so I have that as both a comfort and an endless pang of longing - to have her here.

Anyway, the boxes remain, mostly re-unpacked, but stacked and a few still with their contents, an aching reminder of what could have been. What perhaps even should have been. The regret! Anything now to have one more moment with her. To have thrown over everything, gotten a job at a video store and lived in a tiny flat above it, just to be near her always. I know that’s not where we were going. I know why she loved me, I know that she was ready, even, finally, to come here. But it hurts. It all hurts. I miss her so.

There’s a picture, a blurry one, of Summer on her last visit here. I was in the front room and heard her padding her way in from the kitchen. I wanted to film her but my iPhone was set to still instead of video. What I got was a grainy shot of her in her pajamas, coming into the room - the aforementioned plastic bins stacked in the background and what somehow looks like wings at her back. My angel. I call this picture “Resurrection”. Resurrection One, actually (I’ll post it here, forthwith). I find myself mindfully (as opposed to mindlessly) perusing Tumblr for shots as resonant as this on the same subject - Summer and her resurrection, our reunion beyond the immediate knowledge of those things solely mortal…