What Was It

As I stood on the deck of a ferry, wind against my face, slicing
through dark waters under blue sky, I thought about things on the
borderlands of possible and impossible, like digitally-manipulated
art. You seemed to be all around me: in the giggles of children, in
the conversation of lovers, in the cries of hungry seagulls, as they
conducted aerial maneuvers for alms.

I thought about beginnings and endings, and yesterdays and nows and
tomorrows, and I could feel you there, a presence just beyond the
periphery. Everything shouted, but only I could hear your name in the
thick throats, in the sea hiss, in the engine rumble. I heard you
somewhere over the Olympic mountain range, past the mountain goats
past the snowcaps; you were where the sun lays down to die, and I
thought of you dreaming by its side, content, full of love and loved
in full.

Later, in the ferry terminal, I read fictional constructs from another
time, from another place, and there was a certain heat in their
fictional lives that felt familiar, that felt reflective of us,
without actually being us.

I tried to explain to myself what ‘was,’ but still could not explain
what ‘is.’ It was some foreign word on the tongue without translation;
a novel not yet fully conceived; it was a song yet to be heard by
ears, and it was the sonic boom that filled the skies with your
pounding heart, as metal spires loomed into view on the horizon,
growing larger and larger with your bright welcomes, until the sight
was more than any one man could take.