Two of These Years

8-13-05, Kigali, Rwanda

For hours, I'd been awake writing. My hands have always proved themselves to be more reliable messengers than my mouth -- my mouth, which I swear is directly connected to that side of me that can be more hyperbolic than measured, more quixotic than true. For a week now, you'd been around every corner I turned. I'd leave where you were, afraid of how quickly we were falling into old patterns of laughter and thought. I wondered what you were after, wondered whether you knew that I was preparing to say goodbye. I had to. You would have known why the instant I said it: I couldn't shake an abiding faith that we belonged, in some way, to each other's worlds. From experience, I knew this was a solitary vision. But now -- now, you followed me, a course of action so unlike everything I knew of you that I began allowing myself to think I was being pursued.

It terrified me. This is what I still do not understand about love: how, when it comes home to one who longs for it, it takes courage to let it in.

In the end, I conceded that my skill was too limited to distill the picture in my head: you and I and a mountaintop, descending. You and I, always you and I. Elemental. Who can say that without sounding trite or overblown? Not I then (nor I now, except you've taught me that you value me for trying). I struck out several lines, buried my papers in a duffel bag, and prayed instead. If I'd learned one thing from this land and these people, it was that prayer was more than a last resort. It was a direct line to peace.

8-14-05, Kigali, Rwanda, to London

The sun was still struggling steadily up the city's terraces when we drove in silence to the airport, taking in the last of a country we both inexplicably loved.

We boarded plane after plane; again, you followed me. Here you were, rescuing me from being pinned by a behemoth of a diamond trader. There you went, asking the newlyweds next to you whether they minded moving over one seat to make room for me.

Somewhere over the Sahara, we changed. You recounted our friendship and told me that you'd come to Africa without any expectations as to who we were. You told me you were leaving with something different. It seemed to me that you spoke for hours, quiet and confident, abandoning too the words you'd written me the night before. You invoked the word intention, and when I asked you what you meant, it was clear you saw it, too...everything I saw, the rest of life ahead of us, an adventure, a companionship, a simultaneous coming home and a striking out. Everything, all at once, together.

I won't ask you whether you remember what happened next; I know you remember. I didn't speak; I couldn't. I didn't want to. I took your hand, though, because THAT I had wanted for a long, impossible time. We landed in London, and you left me almost immediately for Brussels. It would be three months before I'd see you again, three months before I'd know what it felt like to kiss you, how you liked your coffee, whether you were a good tipper, how prone you were to throwing me into piles of wet autumn leaves, how you looked when you were absolutely content. I knew all of that lay ahead of us, and so I said goodbye without concern for any of it. It would come (and it has). I, who could never wait for anything, could wait for you.