Arcadia

I sat there in the quiet pleasure of the wind, staring at the rows of marigolds that lay ahead in the rolling fields like a perfectly knitted blanket over the green grass; I continue to let the thoughts of my troubled past flow through me as if my golden hair that hang down, touching the paper beside my ball point pen is what’s really fueling it to dance along the pages.

“When the wind gently touched the cheek of her broken soul, it took all but her breath away. For she knows a warm fire will brightly burn again, someday. Further more, she’s shattered. The love of a friend is what keeps her smile from dying; and when she laughs, tears escape her eyes… the torn behind the shine. Relations that are not so interdependent have a way of being reclaimed by fait and ending. Even tougher knowing that she can’t easily live without him. Yet knowing that nothing good lasts forever is what keeps her pretending, she’s happy.”

I am glad to have so much peace and beauty such a short distance from my rustic home, so I mutter to the marigolds that I will see them again tomorrow and pack up my things.

As I walk, I try to leave my rambling thoughts with the warmth of my favourite flowers, as I transition back into the real world of my everyday life. As soon as I arrive to my front door I remember he’s gone, and the quiet that was so peaceful two seconds earlier now becomes deafening to my soul.

Everyday I count down the seconds that I can return to my favourite place on earth, to surround myself by my favourite person. The only place I feel him anymore.

My mother greets me as I walk in the front door with a smile, but all I feel is the sadness that lingers in air. I get a flashback of the terror on my mother’s face, when she walked out of the pond dripping wet with her long silk dress glued to her body, in our front yard with her grandson laying limp in her arms.

The confusion, the tears, the screams, and the fight to keep my little boy alive is all I remember of that moment, and nothing ever seems to change in my memory of those minutes that felt like hours. Everytime I walk through this door, I fight my urge to run straight back to the fields of sunshine…

Where my golden haired boy is still alive.