Her Old Friends Came To Visit

They left, of course.  They packed the same suitcases they’d carried. They refolded their clothes into tidy soft slates of colour and dragged the zippers along the sides and in their heartlessly definitive way, the zippers sealed up socks and cashmere and dresses yet to be worn along with memories at once blasé and indelible, as memories made with friends who no longer need convincing tend to be.

They had walked, mostly. Loped at times. Talked. They talked.  She'd longed for the sound of talk like theirs -  a sound like the chaotic improvised rhythm of a promising blues band at practice, the beat unmistakeable and infectious.  Their conversation had the hearty back-beat of compassion and adoration, interspersed with the cadence of sure-footed wit and balanced with unflinching love and garish memory. The brave kind. The kind that knows but need not tell, that knows and still. And still isn’t afraid to laugh. Hard.

They stopped, sometimes. Sometimes, one stops.  But as they packed, as the zippers zipped up their boots and their heels clicked toward the ferry, it seemed clear that they would not, really, ever, stop. They would take the tiny trip across the lake and mock the boat and the journey, but they would make it. And they would make it again. And they would bring their bags, and they would unpack them, and they would remember everything that needed remembering, and they would hold each other’s words like they knew that was the one thing they could keep.