"Do you smell that?" an Ode to The River of Time and The Love That Swims Within its Currents

 "Do you smell that?" 

an Ode to The River of Time 

and The Love That Swims Within its Currents

"Do you smell that?"

 

That was the last thing she ever said to me. It was last autumn as the final straggling leaves were saying their farewells. We were holding each other by the hearth and staring into the flame, avoiding eye contact with one another. I held her as I had always held her. I knew these moments we shared had always been fleeting but this one felt especially so. My hand rested on her stomach. The heat between us was rarely this palpable.

 

— . —

It is spring as I write this. I am sitting on a bus returning back home after a weekend with friends. There has been far too much travel lately and not enough time to soak in the joys of another in any meaningful way. I am staring at the back of the bus driver's head wishing I could truly feel wistful for times passed. Romance has been but a short visiting sparrow on a brisk wind. I am the sturdy rock that stays fixed and becomes transfixed by movement that passes me by. The bus feels apt. I am moved by others. All of my fuel is sourced from outside myself. It is best for me to be with another. Experiencing true spiritual connection, staring at the back of a lover's head.

 

The bus driver's hair swoops up to a point like an online .png image of a water droplet. His head is not wet, it is hairy. I haven't shaved my body down nude since I parted ways with the aforementioned "Her." Our time together was bountiful both in production and self exploration. She wrote poems about my oily skin to put on USB sticks and hide in mailboxes of abandoned homes. She posed me as she imagined Adonis would stand. She took hundreds of photos and would print them off at a Staples’ print shop by the apartment that was her's but she called our's. She always returned gleeful with a stack of photos of my naked body. All the digital copies were stored on the USB sticks with the poetry. All the hard copies were tucked under her favourite floorboard. I knew it to be self indulgent but I loved every second of it.

I can feel my chest hair rubbing against my unwashed hoodie I've been wearing for days. I'm not a loser but I haven't been treating myself the best that I could be. The bus seat ahead of me is pressed into my knees. My left hip has been tight the entire duration of the journey. If discomfort and a ride home is what thirty dollars affords I am happy to pay it. I smell like I've been sitting in a chair staring at my laptop screen for three days "working" at a tedious task that will most likely amount to less than nothing. I can see myself in one of the driver's many many mirrors and it looks like I've been sat in an electric chair and put through that whole process.

 

My hair is frizzed up like it was on those late starting days of last autumn.

(I would now like to address her directly)

 

You always said you loved the way my unwashed hair stands up on end. I can remember that last conversation we had laying on your rug that we had pulled over close to your fireplace. I stared at the back of your head and you said you could feel exactly how I was looking at you. You turned and said you had just gotten your work Visa approved that morning. I was still inside of you. I was inside you for the last time. We were so close then. I knew you then. You were working on things that I couldn't begin to pretend to understand. I gave you my seed and you gave me life. You were my impetus to start learning again and to forget that I was stone.

 

I stroked myself to completion in the Flixbus washroom thinking of you.

 

I want to thank you for your patience and courage to move forward. I know I will most likely never see you again. I know I will feel deeply towards someone new. I know that life moves on and as much as we both love to write mournful romantic one and a half page scribbles of poems to be snuck through friends back and forth to each other we must finally allow ourselves to be mobile.

 

That smell was my seed gone sour. We both knew it. Our seed and spum and fluids give way for new knowledge. Without access to our bodies’ most intimate mechanism we are made fools. We may allow ourselves to live in a land where creatures like imps play in fields and gnomes stroke each other dry by babbling brooks as life long committed throuples. Sometimes I may fantasize about this alternate magic that many folks relegate their understandings of love to. I believe fantasy must be momentary and always with acceptance that a return to practicing real world love magic is necessary. Sitting here dripping down my left thigh, pants on, I know what my smell is telling me. It is finally time. My healing journey has completed. I must indulge in the combinations and the alchemy that can be performed with my potent ingredients.

 

One more note: you already know this but I will always love you and I'm sure that your goo is telling you that this is the last thread that should be shared between our now disparate tapestries.

 

Much love to all and much love to you,

 

Sean Harper