Chasing the Swallows by Inman John

Author:Inman, John [Inman, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2015-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

IT’S ODD how quickly the years of a lifetime speed by. You blink your eyes and discover they have clicked past, one by one by one, like the tumbling pages of a Rolodex, moving so fast they become nothing but a blur of shadows and light and faint, faint echoes of sound.

The individual moments of that lifetime, both the real and the imaginary, fly by even faster, until there are only flashes of a select few memories left to study in those idle moments when you find yourself wondering where it all went.

Looking back on my life now, somehow it’s the imaginary moments that bother me most. Why did I waste my time on them? Why did I let them take control of my life? It wasn’t from loneliness or for a lack of love that I turned to erotic fantasies. I have no need for illusions when I have Arthur there beside me every step of the way, knowing now, as I did then, that no one could love me more than he. Nor could I have more completely loved anyone in return.

Arthur has always been the one real constant in my long journey toward growing old. He has been the only unstinting truth I have found along the way, my love for him the only unchanging emotion that has filled my heart from the day we declared ourselves to each other. Loving him, and being loved by him, is my one great accomplishment in life.

The men in my imaginary trysts were empty shadows. Arthur was flesh and blood and generosity and honor. He has never once called his feelings for me anything other than what they are. He has never once turned his eyes to another man when I was there beside him. He has never once made me feel ashamed that I was perhaps not everything he needed, everything he hungered for.

Arthur has taught me what it is to be loved. Unconditionally. Completely.

And while I have loved him back—I have—I have not loved him back with the commitment he deserves.

I did not realize this fact until the day he stared at me with those frightened eyes and declared himself lost—lost not three blocks from our home.

It was then, at that precise moment on our long journey together, that I finally understood our days together were numbered. They were not infinite at all, as I had always led myself to believe.

I think Arthur realized it for the first time that day too.

“I can’t remember where we live,” he had said. With the burn of rising tears in my eyes, I pulled him into my arms to hide them from his view.

It was there, as I look back on that moment, on that red-hot sidewalk in front of a stranger’s house not three blocks from the home we had shared for forty years, that I said good-bye to Arthur for the very first time, just as he had admitted his leaving to me. Not in so many words maybe. But the truth was suddenly there before us, and we both knew it.

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