Where Once You Stood

Where once you stood I glance across the room to where once you stood, busy with the evening meal, intent on the rhythms of preparation, glass of wine close at hand; Barber’s haunting andante unfolds in my head, the oboe’s sad note counterpoint to my happiness. You would look up, smiling, and catch me gazing at your graceful form: slender legs, the gentle curve of breast and hip, the arch of your eyebrows. I hold these memories close to me, they are my anchors that berth me in hope. The irrepressible Miss distracts me from my reverie, with demand to play, to enter her madcap world, full of laughter, flying limbs, and innocence. But always there is you, full of contradiction, with promises and loving words, and yet false. You speak. “Trust me” you say often, and in time I do; a blind leap of faith into opportunity, far from the safety of solitude. “Go slowly”, you say, and I rein in my joyful enthusiasm, puzzled and unsure how but obedient and willing. “Trust me” you say, but where is your trust or, better still, your determination to see things through, to hold uncertainty inside and enter into the chaos of compromise, the tension of priorities stretched and changed, with all the anxiety that brings. Once you stood there, on a threshold between independence and life fulfilled, but drew back, retreated into the safety of work, and in time into aloneness, save for that young Miss, a joy for anyone, and the comforting rituals of each day. I puzzle still. Was it sudden realisation of the gulf of age, or lack of that fiery spark that makes another irresistible, or some forbidden fear that blurs father and partner; or was it simple motherhood, that provided reason enough. I glance again at where once you stood and miss the electric bond of presence, the anticipation of two souls, two futures, two paths that yet entwine, separate but one, point and counterpoint; an elegant argument for life.