Time in a Bottle

          It was only a TV ad for a brokerage company, an ad aimed at the refugees of a faltering economy. A man took out a bagel from a paper bag and started eating it. The actor said something like, "You can't eat bagels all your life. Don't miss the feasts in your future."

          Idiots! The only feast in the future for me was in the rehashing of old memories and drinking from a bottle. To me, the bottle always signaled your singing, Dear David.

          "If I could save time in a bottle..."

          I couldn't look at that half-eaten bagel in the ad without seeing you. You loved bagels: chicken salad inside a bagel, bagel and lox, bagel and cream cheese or just plain bagel, your favorite.

          The actor's pitch couldn't drown out the sobbing inside me, but soon his voice drifted into a whisper, and I fell asleep in front of the TV set. I woke up at midnight, turned the TV off, and went to bed, but my pain followed me like a dog with fleas. Pain or rage, I couldn't tell the difference.

          It wasn't difficult to lie in bed, stiff as a corpse, waiting for the lost sleep to find its way home. I closed my eyes and let the music in my mind carry me to you.

          "If I could make days last forever
          If words could make wishes come true
          I'd save every day
          Like a treasure and then,
          Again, I would spend them with you."

          Coming down a long flight of stairs into a dark dungeon. . . You are walking down with me. . .
         
          You stop me in the middle and say, "Don't go there! I'm not there."

          I tell you, "I am going for a bottle. The bottles are stored there."

          You say, "You don't need that bottle; you need me. Look. . . I am always here with you. See what we can do together? We can be together like before. Even better than that. Better than before."

          Then, I see you all around me. You are to my right, to my left, in the front, and in the back of me, and you keep penetrating through me, inside and out...inside and out.

          "See how close we are? This is better than before."

          Then, you start singing.

          "If I could save time in a bottle
          The first thing that I'd like to do
          Is to save every day
          'Til eternity passes away
          Just to spend them with you..."

          "Is this a miracle?" I ask.

          "Life is the biggest miracle," you answer, "So many little miracles are pinned into that enormous miracle. Live it Sylvia. Live it for us. So I can feel those miracles, too, because now, you saw how I live in you."

          Then you melt into me. All of a sudden, there is no dungeon, no stairs, no you, no me.

          I am now drifting through the clouds. In a wink, a sunbeam breaks through, and I am in sunshine over the clouds in a very blue sky.

          I hear you singing again.

          "I've looked around enough to know
          That you're the one I want to go
          Through time with."

          As I was singing with you, I woke up. An ocean surf of happiness had burst into the ensemble of us.

          When I got out of bed, I saw the empty bottles around. I picked them up and took them to the trash. The contents of the half empty bottle by the TV set, I poured into the sink.

          Next, before all the pain could return to my brain, I dialed AA to ask when and where their next meeting would be.

          After that, I sat at the computer to start writing again.

          "There was a man, and there was a woman. One day, their moon faded. She couldn't see him any more. She sobbed and cried until she learned not to bleed with the waning moon, but the moon was always there. It was her eyes that couldn't see it."