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Martha, You've Been on My Mind

Perhaps it is the color of this gray rainy sky at the end of spring, this cold but soothing day I hoped would be warm, bright and the end of something I gotta carry on. Or maybe it's that I'm thinking of old days to while away the time until new days come along. Perhaps it's all that or it's nothing at all, but Martha, you've been on my mind.

I wouldn't dare to try and find you or even write to you, so instead I write about you, about who I think you are, because in truth I don't really know you. To me you're just a memory, a good memory though, and more importantly, you're the very first crossroads in my life. I had no free will before I saw you and chose what I chose... Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, you would have led me down one, and yet I chose the other. But I never stopped looking down your chosen path for as long as I could, and for a fleeting moment I could have sworn I saw you standing there, and then you just faded, almost as if you had vanished with the fallen leaves or just by turning around a corner. Now it's not my place to decide whether I chose right or wrong, it seems all too meaningless in more ways than one. I will never know what could have been, so why wonder? But if I don't wonder, what do I have? So I do wonder but I don't say, and I don't plead. I wouldn't write to you and whatever I do write I don't expect you'll one day care enough to read. It was a long time ago and now we're both different people. We never truly met and yet, Martha, you've been on my mind.

Though I sit here, thinking, writing on and drifting off, losing my train of thought at every other turn, I still can't help but wonder about your own choices and about how I went down my own road perhaps thinking you'd wait for me. It's easy to forget you had your own path and took it with just the same fierce determination as anyone else. Or maybe it was vain determination, maybe you took a false step here and there like we all do from time to time, or like I do all the time, such as when I drifted away from you as well as from everyone else I ever parted ways with. Wherever your path took you it's your path to take and not mine to take back. Whatever you've done since, whatever mistakes you've made or dreams you've conquered, whether near or far, they aren't for me to know now. I just picture one day meeting you by sheer chance, or fate, or something else, and you, as thou art careful, you'd be surrounded by guardian friends, and I'd have to ask them for your company. To steal, they'd jokingly ask, and I'd say, no, only to borrow, and I don't even mind who you'll be waking with tomorrow, but Martha, you're just on my mind.

I lose myself imagining such stories and fantasies, these silly schoolboy daydreams of mine, but I'd never be able to ask you for any of it. I'd trade my kingdom for a kiss upon your shoulder, but what a fool you'd be to take me up on that. These dreams would never come true by my leave and by your indifference. It's now real likely you ain't remember any of it, in fact, there's hardly anything to remember. If even my name has escaped you for a moment then call me Tom Frost, because it's a name as good as any other. I suppose I just see the void of what could have been as far greater than what my life is now. But I have to wave away those thoughts because if I should lose myself in them, then I should never come back. At times I let myself have them for you and it damn near kills me... I accept all of my endless mistakes and I live with them, for good or for bad, they are mine to own and mine to keep. But you... walking away from you is something I just can't help but wonder about. My life might have been far worse, who knows, or maybe far better. I tend to think more of the latter even though I try to never think of you at all, but Martha, you're just on my mind.

Tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow, when you wake while away the time for a little while. Lie in bed, let your thoughts run free, or maybe just stare out the window, and if the sky is blue and the sun is shining, very much unlike this day of mine, think about whatever distant memories you like. And if by some chance I just so happen to cross your mind, know that you have oh so often crossed mine as well. And though you may well be indifferent, just know that, to me, it would make all the difference.

May 25, 2018

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This has been text number 300 from Nostos. The book is a collection of four hundred texts, most of which are written in portuguese, while only twenty-one of which are written in english. As such they will be periodically published here, in full.

You can find out more about the book here.

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