I run past above and can see us gasping, plunging, blocked with cold laughter as we fight the faint waves.
So it started on the lake. Little pieces, jousting, which fell slowly together like rain on a hot summer roof. I was running, from whatever. 5K on a dry pebbly track, feet skidding, dust showering up from between the stones.
You’d arrive in a few days, you see. I’d planned it. I’d be there at the airport. Everything was falling so neatly together as though I’d controlled it all. You’d emerge from the gates, face hot, rucksack sinking between your shoulder blades, dressed for the wrong climate, and as I’m driving us home we’ll talk in the fast excited buzz of those close but long separated.
A corner; the reach of the lake beyond me, far out to the distant middle. It was tree-lined with rocky green. The rough scuttling of birds in the hidden growth, pigeons gripping fat-toed to skinny branches. I ran between it breathing in long pulls—in through the nose, out through the mouth. A dog shouted its impotence from behind a closed gate, and steps later was gone.
We’d swim there, maybe: down there where the youth of hereabouts are congregated in their shallow insouciance on the stone beach. A sort of low jetty there, skimming the lake. Some ducks squabbling out a lovers’ tiff at its end.
I’d drive us up here and we’d park, each nervous inwardly, swimming costumes tight and cool against us beneath our clothes. Strip at the beach edge and pile our possessions on a towel—your rucksack, my faded carrier bag. The water would freeze us rigid, upright in our shells. Like limpets we’d prise our feet from the rocks and wade deeper. I run past above and can see us gasping, plunging, blocked with cold laughter as we fight the faint waves.
Afterwards, we’d haul out onto the towel and sit dripping, knees pulled in. We’d turn our feet to the sun and laugh about things, the way people do. You can almost feel the grit in our flip-flops, the wet of straps cooling and congealing against skin. Pack our stuff, make the slow trip, stretched by our own discomfort, back up to the car. Our hair drying and curving outwards in the sun. I’d drive us home in my bare feet, your arm out the window, cackling or maybe sleeping a little.
On the far shore I raised my head and saw them above me, hung like kites on the empty sky, the five hawks. They rippled slightly in the wind, almost motionless. One was nearest and I could see its wild underside, all white and golden-brown, with long streaks of black to the wingtips. They were far away but huge. They sailed up and over each other as smoothly as magnets pushed round the face of a fridge. The sky was aqua; the lake was white and blue. As I watched, the hawks caught the sun in their wings like a football and bounced it red and gold around their feathers.
I put my head down and ran the few meters to the shade of the trees. I was hoping for a better view, to see them without the sun in my eyes, but when I looked back, seconds later, all five had disappeared. The sky was wiped clean. In the space of a dozen footsteps, they had each turned, wheeled, dived and vanished into the trees, the fields or the open distant sky. The lake and the path reappeared around me, and left me wondering if I’d imagined the five hawks, the way I’ve so often imagined you.
Header photo by Izf, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Katie McIvor by Alex Watson.