Photography

A true story. The life of the Ex Boyfriend.

Chapter 173: L’amour de la fin d’ete 

Such a beautiful sun that rose over the backdrop of these small Appalachian mountains today. My hand flows outside of your car window with the pattern of the gentile wind that rolls up this empty road. In a moment, we will be rolling up into the magic spot where we find ourselves best together, where everything shines a little brighter. The baby blue sky has only a few small stains of optic white clouds and they barely move because there is no real breeze today. You roll up on the uncut grass and onto the driveway of the cottage that has begged for visitors for just over a year now, get out of your car and take everything we brought back back into this place. It is here that I believe in you. It is here that I forget everything bad that has ever happened between us and smile at everything good that we’ve created together. Times when I thought that we might just not be okay change here and make these thoughts seem just so stupid. We’re home I hear myself mutter. 

All things familiar still lay here untouched. The same horses in the pen, the same tree just outside the cottage’s steps that we have spent hours in just talking about nothing in particular, the sun chair that lays in the shadows of this place. It’s all the same and my happiness is replenished fully because I know that for once, here, I have you just to myself and hopefully you can enjoy the idea that you have me to yourself. We dine beautifully together, pouring your love of wines into fragile glasses for us to enjoy. Outside we find ourselves in the sun, off for long walks like we usually do tirelessly. In town, we get the fresh end-of-summer fruits and vegetables to prepare an eventual supper and secretly slip our hands into each others. As the afternoons heat takes over, we run naked into the secluded river like the children that never grew out of us and laugh, play and do everything we don’t normally do. When that’s out, we dry off in the sun on the dock and roll into each other where we will kiss for hours on end until four o’clock’s shadow creeps in. Dinner is eaten outside on the patio where we can watch the sun set together while fiddling with our intertwined hands. It glimmers just above the tree line but eventually falls behind it where the world we exist in becomes drowsed in an orange glow. The birds grow silent, the bugs slowly begin to disappear and nightfall becomes prominent. We make our way to the campfire where we stay huddled into each other until our firewood goes extinct, until the last spark becomes an orange glow and that is our cue to spend the night under the stars. Here we express how we truly feel about one and other. Our cheeks go flush red, our hearts beat faster and euphoria is at best. This lasts all night where a blend of sex and conversation tirelessly carries out until the brink of dawn shows itself. That’s when we call it a night. When the morning rises, we repeat the same thing and never grow tired of it. We never grow tired of tracing imaginary lines with our fingers over our bodies and faces. We never grow tired of talking endlessly to each other and we never grow tired of sharing our infinite ideas with each other. 

An early afternoon sunlight falls upon our naked bodies and we finally wake up, slowly commence our day and make it to a cute breakfast place just before they close. If perfection existed in reality and could be agreed upon by everyone, it would be beautiful moments like this. Moments when the love between two people exceeds everything you could ever expect to become something know as perfection. The perfect serenity many people long desire. Fresh bread, Apple trees, the smell of newly cut grass, baby blue skies, deep navy waters, laying under the stars, intertwining of fingers, passionate kisses, Californian wine, the braids on horses, seductively hazel eyes, dirty blond hair, the green of leaves, academia, philosophy, psychology, poems, literature, paintings, French language, the countryside, lonely roads, lush forests, Early September air, undying summer heat, Whiskey, travel, naked flesh, love, photography, memories… the maddening effects of nostalgia. 

Eventually we need to leave here. This here was the beginning of the end wasn’t it. Where the heart felt whole and soon after, empty.  && when this place fell away from my view as I starred out the back window of your car, my heart had already began to ache the pains it would endure for the months to come. Your distance grew disgusting, your smile was never the one I saw back during these cottage days, your glow became one I never recognized and the love of the man I once thought loved me, gone. It just sucks that even as we lay dead next to each other, I can’t seem to forget how we once looked at each other here. How perfect everything was and how imperfect everything is now. How we once ran across the grass with our shadows chasing us and that for once I felt like someone actually knew me entirely, and, best of all, loved me for everything I was. I thought that for once this was not a dream that lived in my head, that our nights out and days spent together as much there as here were heartfelt and sincere. Only now do I see the difficulty you acquired in continuing to love me. Only now, as I stare at pictures of us smiling together so genuinely, do I realize that you do not love me like you once loved me there. And now, you’ve even faded away from my life. I’ve cried for months on end because you had fallen prey to reality. To cheat. To fight. To pretend. To hurt. To kiss another. To prefer another. I guess I really was so blind and prideful on this perfection I never thought existed, convinced that this was perfection because I had never seen it before. We were like the titanic, bound for a crash course that nobody saw coming. I guess I’m just trying to say that even as I stand on this same cottage ground three years later, feeling nothing for you, I can’t help but cry out as I remember everything that was once so beautiful here. That for once I was not as alone as I have been all my life. That for once I had someone to share things with, I had someone to share everything with. And I guess that meant nothing, so, this should mean nothing too~ 

It’s hard to talk about the things that have left me. The things that I once cherished with all my heart and really believed would never end. The things I have loved with all my heart, more than I have ever known I was capable of and watch them all turn to dust. Especially hard because it was days spent with this boy that I can never forget since they gave birth to myself. A self I’ve loved even when he disappeared. He showed me the art of smoking a cigarette in the shade of a setting sun but more beautifully the music that still echo’s timelessly through my head till this day. The hours, the beauty and the deadly bleeding beast. Songs he played for me on the waters edge as we dried off under the imperial sun. Who would have known this river was where I would desire to drown myself many times just like we did to those old books in pursuit of art. “Always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours” you breathed, exactly how Virginia Woolf had put it when she wrote to Leonard. 

God.  

Lastly, I don’t think I can forget you. You play in my mind ever so often and I quietly find myself dreaming of these gregarious days, beautiful blue skies and the times I spent and continue to spend infinitely with you~ 

<3 

©Christopher Sammons