The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

14 |Moving Forward

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on." –Robert Frost

It was easy to imagine how an eidetic memory could become a curse. Despite being so far away from him, Bianca could still remember every last thing about him.

The way he laughed, a low sound that was always accompanied by a grin that stretched across his entire face. How he walked, his long legs easily crossing the sidewalk, his shoulders always in some semblance of slouching. His tie was always crooked in some way. His hair was messy, but it never looked bad on him. He could talk about books and authors for days on end, and used to ask her what she thought of each one she read. His lips weren't quite symmetrical, making every smile just a little bit crooked. He knew the names of all the stars and memorized a list of all the things that made her smile.

She remembered all those things, but more than that, she missed them. Everything about him, she ached to see or to hear one more time. The memories of every date, every kiss, every touch, every conversation haunted her, never staying away for long. There was only one way to keep the loneliness at bay.

She wrote. Bianca wrote poems, long and short, some specific and others the sort of vague metaphorical verses that made sense only to the person who wrote it – or the person it was about. A few months ago, she had accepted a position in Georgetown's law program next year. The tuition would be expensive, and there was an easy way to pay most of it off: another book. Her last anthology was by no means a New York Times bestseller, but it had been released to modest success and a few obscure poetry awards. She could put out another, make enough of a profit to afford school, and study without worrying about the bills.

Choosing the theme had been easy. Her first collection, A Song for Starlit Beaches had been all about compassion, and making a difference, and the significance of every human being. Those were the things on her mind when she had been writing, studying psychology as an undergrad and living away from her family for the first time. Now her mind was filled with memories of a life a world away, a man who had brought her so much happiness, and the team that had become his family.

Since moving to The Hague, she had written about them so much already. It was almost an unconscious need to put their stories onto paper so they would stop floating around in her mind while she tried to focus on translating French or memorizing legal jargon. They were all so fresh in her memory, their names coming so easily. Sometimes she wrote about the monsters they fought, or the way they pushed back the darkness. She turned their courage into stanzas and verses, and she transfigured all she knew about Spencer into rhymes and metaphors. It was easier to copy down poems like these after years of using writing as a way to dull the pain of growing up with her family.

On warmer days, she would take her notebook down the beach or sit by the edge of a seaside canal. Removing her shoes, she would dip her toes in the water and write for hours. It was funny how the ocean was so vast, but it made the distance between Europe and the US seem a little less large. She was sitting near one shore of the Atlantic, and on the opposite side was Washington DC, and therefore so was Spencer.

Bianca made a call to her editor, who was delighted to hear she wanted to publish again, and emailed a sample of latest work. That began a once familiar correspondence, decisions of which poems to put where, and how long it was to be, and what should the cover look like, and what was it called?

She flipped through her journal to the page she had marked weeks ago, glancing over the last verses of what she had written.

You knew the names of all the stars and
all the lives that had left this earth
in your care, a burden that you thought you had to bear
alone.