I pressed firmly into my seat, as the massive jet slipped gravity. At 300 kilometers per hour, the runway in Melbourne fell away, music already in my ears, companionless as usual. We banked hard to the west, rising above the smoke of widespread wildfires, breaking through into cascades of sunlight drenching flowers of billowy clouds. I have no expectations – I’ve landed in LA, San Diego, San Francisco dozens of times – this was just Western Australia. Perth.
I inspected the Australian skies through the jet window – imaging your companionship. And when we landed and disembarked, I could almost sense your anticipation and figure moving behind me – I turned out of the jet way, and you overtook me like a wave making a break for the beach. Awakened and anxious to get out into the streets, I became thirsty, but no drink would quench it.
The breezes eddied behind passing cars, stirring some fallen eucalyptus leaves that softened under my soles. Limbs of willow trees, wagged and formed breathing shadows of you in my path. I can smell your hair and the perfume lingering on your shoulders, but I can’t see you.
One ticket to Fremantle – a few steps off the platform, I’m sitting on fiberglass seats staring out a thick plastic window – with little stress fissures in it that channel the sunlight into scintillating whiskers; the train lurches and we are off to the port city, Freo. I imagine our hands touching, grasping the steel pole as we sway through turns in the track. I smile secretly with closed lips, and close my eyes – lifting my head to feel the kiss of my companion.
I reach for you as we enter a maze of open streets – and you slip through my fingers. I’m disappearing into passages between colonial buildings, coming out onto terraced patios, empty handed but filled with a vision of red, and white, and yellow peonies in dashed rows of tidy flower boxes. Before me is a single drink on a black wrought iron table, glistening beads rolling down uncontrollably as the seaside air condenses on the cold glass. I imagine your soft visage and mane, softly quivering in a breeze amidst alfresco cafés.
The bustling marketplace is filled with new faces and lively music and curios and crafts in busy blends of yet unnamed colors. Faces are moist with a light sweat, smiling – crowds of companions, sparked and animated, with embraced arms and sacks of mutual adored memories in progress.
I turn to my missing companion – a soft face browned by the love of sunlight, lips moist and full of life that move in to fill my mouth with the quenching sensation of hope. Her identity eludes me, but she drifts freely before my eyes, plays symphonies in my ears, and we sway through time in the exchange of our breaths. Each beautiful epiphany, electric experience, is the same bright star by which we both navigate home to a kiss.
I dreamed of our time together on the flight home to the eastern seaboard. And when I walked out of the jet way, I was clinging tight to her memory. I was no longer thirsty. I thought to myself, I only know she is gone, when I cannot turn to her to say hello; and I mostly miss her if she isn’t here to kiss me goodbye. My companion wasn’t missing – she was waiting.
