Solstice

She tells me that today is the longest day. Tells me too as if it is a con­spir­at­orial secret, as if it would make me want to leap up and embrace her, kiss the child-like grin that places ripples of echoes of grins fur­ther up on her roun­ded cheeks. Wreathed in smiles. Please don’t stop being wreathed in smiles.

The longest day, and you’re awake. You’re awake.

I’m awake, yes, I reply, unsure if it’s really true. But, I protest, I haven’t been any­where. I was here the whole time. I saw trains pulling into the sta­tion out­side my win­dow; the world turn­ing upside down when I opened my eyes; people stretched out beneath me as I perched in this pre­cari­ous nest of cush­ions, fixed and frozen for fear of fall­ing. I saw digital fig­ures tick­ing the seconds off until some cata­clys­mic event, then merely sig­nalling an elec­tronic beep and flip­ping back to the start of a seem­ingly never-ending count­down when that decis­ive moment was reached. End­less flash­ing numbers.

I don’t know who she is from Eve — or Adam, come to that — yet I whis­per my secret back to her. I giggle, almost uncon­trol­lably. I saw ostriches, you know. Ostriches. Or flamin­goes. Whichever. Who cares? They were here, that’s all that mat­ters. Tall, gangly birds. I saw them, and don’t you dare tell me that I didn’t. One of them took a photo of this empty shell in which I’m lying by rising and loom­ing over me with its lens. Now don’t tell me that didn’t hap­pen, because I know it did.

Some­thing hurts. I’m not sure where.

Pumped full of metals, pumped full of liquids. Feel­ing sea­sick whilst being weighted down and barred in leads to vomit leads to nausea. Viol­ently thrown back and forth across a tem­pes­tu­ous ocean of chem­ical reac­tion. And each reac­tion only leads to cata­tonic inac­tion. That very fact surely makes this woman unreal. A fic­tion. An ima­gin­ing. She’s talk­ing and touch­ing my hand — don’t touch, don’t even fuck­ing touch, what the hell are you doing? — but she has your voice and her voice and his voice, all of them call­ing to me through this wool­len, heavy-lidded haze. The longest day. It’s the longest day, my dear.

Don’t call me dear. Not your dear. Not yours. No one else’s, but cer­tainly not yours. That con­fuses me bey­ond where I already am.

I have things to do, I tell her. I can’t stay here. I prom­ised to call him. I prom­ised to write to her. I am meet­ing them for a drink, because we have plans of vast import but little con­sequence. I have a half-finished doc­u­ment lan­guish­ing on my desk. Must be done by Wed­nes­day, whenever that might be. So I ask her. Is that today? Today is Wed­nes­day, right? I have to get out of here, then. Things to do. No hurry, she tells me. No hurry, child. Longest day today. Dawn ’til dusk is end­less. You’ve got hours. Hours and hours of forevertime.

She dir­ects my gaze to the win­dow. I screw up my eyes against the yel­low, pier­cing glare and almost retch. If this is what one single minute of forever looks like, you can take it. And can you take the dull ham­mer­ing in my skull while you’re at it?

Her fin­gers rest on the back of my hand once more, and this time I’m grate­ful. Noth­ing makes sense, and even as I begin to faintly recall that I am sup­posed to be that bundle of nerves and neur­oses who too often recoils from sud­den unin­vited touches, this soft­est of dark and wrinkled hands is wel­come. She tells me to sleep. Tells me that I’ll under­stand everything when I wake up, in my own time. Longest day, remem­ber? No rush, child. No rush.

I never saw her again, who­ever she was. True enough, I saw and spoke to her phys­ical mani­fest­a­tion many times over the months. When it came time to finally depart, since she had been the first per­son I remembered set­ting my dazed and trick-playing eyes upon, it was also entirely nat­ural for me to go and bid her a fond farewell.

That morn­ing, how­ever, as she stood beside me for a few spare minutes amid the bustle and warmed my hand in hers, she was the embod­i­ment of all the people I have ever met, all the people I have never met; the spirit of all those to be treas­ured in the past, the present and the future.

This everywoman’s sooth­ing touch and her whispered words helped me to sleep away that lost Sum­mer Sol­stice, one that I’ll never get back. No mat­ter. Wherever she is on this mid­sum­mer even­ing, I hope she some­how knows that as I write these words, I’m watch­ing dusk fall­ing. Dusk fol­lows day just as surely as, all those hours ago, day fol­lowed the dawn which I briefly woke to watch break over this city’s patch­work of rooftops.