I sometimes think I see her shaping up between two stars.
It's rather distressing, because I'm well aware that she'd never be floating around in Space - and even less so dressed in that white dress in which I last saw her - but I do see her at times, she's right there in front of me, just beyond the big front window through which the whole wide Universe relentlessly offers itself to my Ship.
No need explaining to myself that seeing her shaped as a constellation is nothing less than my slow decline into madness, because, in reality, when I excitedly point her out to Marcus ("Look, Marcus!! She's here again!") and he patiently warns me "Sir, it's not her. This is a constellation, Sir. I have never seen it before myself, but that is not a woman, Sir, women don't go around dancing in between stars, as much as you wish they would, particularly..."
"...particularly if I once loved them, Marcus, and was dumped like garbage; yes I know, I know, this can't be her. She'd never come back. Fuck. And how could she be there? Oh no, oh no, Marcus, she's gone again, you are right, you are right."
So, I was saying, when I do point her out to Marcus in my half-ached delirium, she's as crystal clear as she ever was in my arms, and I can't ignore the rather obvious fact that all of this actually happens in the backbones of my head - that fine membrane that separates Memory from Reality playing tricks on me time and time again. And it's only Marcus' condescending taps on my ecstatic shoulder that bring back to me the logical skepticism of Reason that I am supposed to exercise, and whatever was left of Her then finally fades away in the dark skies.
But then Marcus goes back to his bunk, and as soon as he does so, she shapes up again, and by then I know already that she can't possibly be outside the Spaceship, so I convince myself that she's inside, oh man!, inside, I convince myself that what I'm seeing is her reflection on the glass window, and that she's right there behind my back, watching me steer the Ship towards the Unknown and patiently waiting for me to turn my head around, in order to give me that wide, proud, merry, lily-white smile of hers and ask me "what's up?" before kissing me once again.
We met at a time when I was a young, adventurous air force pilot and she was one of those gorgeous middle-class big-city girls that were graced with endless energy and even more ambition for a stable marriage with a loaded guy, even if they pretended very well to desire exactly the opposite. A loaded guy!!.., I mean, even if I were to have made it big in flying fighter jets, (as oposed to ending up steering this junk in a lost mission towards a long forgotten objective), I could never - ever!, for fuck's sake - have afforded to keep her, but
I just fell for her that Summer, that long, dry Summer that felt like Spring, I totally and uncontrollably fell for her, and that's it,
so I gave her grand illusions of a life on the road in between air force bases and paradise islands, the life that I wanted for myself and that I thought would keep her away from her stupid class-climbing ambitions; but of course the illusion was on ME, she was never illusioned by any of my crap, and as soon as she found out that we'd start splitting the restaurant bills once I'd realized that she could actually afford her own half instead of spending it all on make-up, she just disappeared,
like that,
gone like the dust traces of this Spaceship, just evaporated within the big big city, lost to me like I'm lost to Life now - both her, then, and me, now, gone from sight and touch.
And I know now - much better than I was able to discern then - that she was nowhere close to the woman that I needed, she was just a gold-digging, well-lived, ladder-climbing, materialistic little thing, but - even now! - I remember the beautiful, thrilling, self-aware, monopolizing and everything-else-wiping charm she had, and that joy for life, and the way she made me feel special - not just for being with her, but for making her feel special to be with me, too.
Oh, man, we clicked, we did, but WE'd never work, and she found that out sooner than I was able to set my alarm clock, so one day I woke up to an empty bed and a goodbye note that I never found (because she never wrote it),
and even now, years and years later, even now, when I see her between two stars, even now I'm just not able to admit that it's not her out there, that it's only my head telling me that I miss her and I lost her, and nothing more than that, other than that I'll potentially miss her forever, or at least as long as I meander around Space; because there's nothing else to do out here than reminisce, and Love is such a sweet sweet memory, even when it failed,
so in those nights when she shows up, I don't turn around anymore, I just sit there and steer on and on, and all along there she is behind my back, looking at me through her own reflection, not quite as she used to because reflections aren't as real as flesh, but real enough to keep me going for a little while longer.
