bonfire night 2020

it’s the fifth of November, meaning it’s the day of Lewes bonfire night. I’m in bed listening to the ticking of the clock mum and dad bought me for my twenty first birthday upon returning home from my adventure. it’s late and I’m thinking of this day a year ago, the word in which I lived and the people I shared it with.

bonfire night was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. a parade of thousands of torches down our high street, which on any other night would be completely silent and still. stacks the height of apartment buildings taking flame on the village outskirts under a sky of fireworks that ran on and on. the streets a mess of smoke from firecrackers thrown as soon as the cops disappeared at midnight. I wonder if my friends will think of what we saw that night sometime today. sometimes I think they’ve managed to leave it all behind, and I’d be happy for them if it’s the case. sometimes missing them and our lives there is too much to bear.

the thought of that time as the best of all I’ll ever know is woeful, though it only makes Lewes and those people so much more precious. perhaps one day I’ll know again the thrill and joy I shared with those people then and there, though these things can never be guaranteed. I don’t even know if bonfire night is being celebrated this year, with everything strange going on in the world at the moment. I’d like to think nothing could stop the historic tradition, though I know in time everything is taken away and inevitably disappears.

Eliu called me today, and for the first time in months we chatted for hours. she misses everything too, and it’s a relief to feel understood by her, to know I’m not alone in feeling unable to move on from Lewes and what we found there. the sound of her voice is a blessing, though hearing her laugh makes me wish we could be neighbours again. I’m still writing, trying not to lose the memories as time passes. I’ve almost written up to our leaving each other, the end of our time together. part of me worries my words won’t be worthy of honouring that time, with how sacred it seems to me now. I hope they can at least keep some of it alive when time takes away whatever precious memories I still replay over and over in my mind.

I said goodbye to a friend yesterday, the first time since leaving Lewes. it was difficult, and I wished I could’ve had the chance to refuse the farewell, to hold onto the person. but she left and we now have to try to make sense of it. I hope to see her again someday. like Lewes, I miss her deeply already. << x