looking for alice

we had met in a little seaside town just north of Marseille in the cool summer of 1975. It had been 2 years now and I could barely remember what life felt like before it all. she was a young writer from Sicily, 20 something with eyes that burned with desire and dreams for a life that simmered somewhere in the dark.

for some time it was beautiful, long days spent by the water with the cliffs on each side of the beach, hot walks back to the car, her cheeks warm and red in the summer. wine in the garden under the pink evening sky, her hands on the back of my neck, my arm around her waist. playing cards late into the night until our bodies began to tire and she kissed me under the tall Cyprus trees.

hot nights spent at the Villa with the windows open and her lips pressed against mine, my hands in her hair and the sheets spread across the floor. a gentle sweat on her lip, her hands reaching out to find mine in the dead of night. the way her body contoured to the shape of mine and her perfume hung in the air like smoke. how she felt like nobody had ever felt before and how in those moments that we existed together I no longer feared death.

how over the years that we spent on and off I watched her grow and change into a person that in the mirror started to look a little like me. how I saw the dreams that were mine become hers with such distinction that I couldn't remember where they were born. how I found her as a blank canvas and painted myself into her life so willingly that when she left I had no idea how to get back home.

her blue eyes and fine tattoos, the way that words hung off her lips and her voice rose higher after some wine. the cross necklace against her white skin under the moonlight, the martini's at the café deep into the morning, and the way that I still couldn't seem to let her go. how we spoke words in those moments where her eyes fell across mine, her expression calm and mine harsh. how I looked at her with eyes that screamed I still love you, and she looked at me with eyes that still burned with pain.

and although it never really made sense, maybe it didn't have to. I couldn't understand why I still felt weak when I saw her in the street, how my hands trembled and my heart pounded and all I wanted was to be seen. how on the nights that I saw her it was like nobody else existed, and how I died slowly knowing that we were strangers to each other now. how the eyes that once poured wonder into my soul now ruined me, and how I felt this may never really pass.

how I knew that I had to leave this place to find peace and how I was certain that I would still look for her even across the other side of the world. how the safest place for her to exist was solely in my mind, in places and memories locked away that she could never steal, behind a heart that was heavy with grief and wonder about the world.

and although right now I felt despair, I knew eventually it would fade. maybe in time I would call her by her name again and it wouldn't feel like it did right now. watching her become a version of herself that was really a version of me, watching her walk into wonderland as the alice that I created, and the alice I could never really love.