As If Forever

There existed in the infinity of time just one moment of one afternoon washed in dappled sunlight, of trembling leaves shaking beautiful shadows over a deep green lawn that rolled gracefully down to the cerulean water. Where the sun shone a swath of ever changing facets across the depth's movement, a young girl in an old woman's body sat on a bench, breathing the light in, and with eyes nearly closed, back out again in an imagined scattering of dandelion light seeds.

She knew that, just as surely as as every other moment had fleetingly kissed her eyes and stolen away, this was an afternoon of forever. This moment was one that she would not be allowed to lose to the deep gray box of gone things. This was already an old memory, a natural thought, like the feeling of her tongue against her teeth, the way the sight of her hands was deeply held familiarity.

The wind lifted her hair lightly, and she thought about the waves of light and sound unknowable to the human apparati. She was an old woman who had long ago fallen in love with the invisible, finding for herself the source of all Creation there. She was one charmed by the romance in the invisible force that guided her eye to the delicate new leaf, the fiery starlit sunrises, and knew herself courted by an unseen god.

"Stand a little taller," he whispered, coming up invisible behind her ear. As she bent down to grab the bag at her feet, he hooked his index finger into the base of her spine, and there found the dark and rotten threads, congealed together with hardened tears and bruises. Very gently, like playing an instrument, he separated the sound of this black strand from the birds trill and dancing reels. He pulled and the woman smiled, for a minute, feral, her pupils widening and her eyes taking on the slant of expression starkly, and suddenly. She heard a small sound like the sigh of a pipe organ, and felt a twinge between her shoulders.She stood up gracefully, and slinging the bag over her shoulder smiled at the lake, and gave a small wave goodbye to it.

If anyone had watched her closely, they would have seen, quite clearly that she walked easily with a myriad of unseen companions. The way it seemed so subltly like she had grasped a reaching hand in front of her as she strode off, strikingly graceful..It seemed as if the trees themselves were nodding to her as she walked along the park path. Birds landed closer on the ground to her as she walked along, and all of nature appeared to respond to her presence. Nothing so obvious as butterflies landing en masse upon her, though wild things injured were often directly in her path by the Fates, and she would lovingly bring them home to die in peace or heal in love; it was more subtle than Disney, or even Sgt. Peppers. This was a lonely heart that was no more.

He walked beside her, looking down upon her with great affection. She had been decades in the finding. He had followed one scent here, another there, maddeningly: from the anguished wails of her infancy, to the screaming wild echo of her losses. She left traces of herself on the railings of the St.Charles Hotel, off Bourbon Street. He had franticallly sought her that night, following her through the mazes in the green backgarden of the Mermaid Lounge, where her very being had stood frozen on the stair, and left the dust of pyramids scented so strongly he had been transported.. There were places the world over where he came upon her clear film of sparkle. Sometimes he found them as tears around low creatures who called themselves human, greedily humping away on their own wetness and trying to inject her ether. He left them be, they were without merit or direction. There were aganizingly long periods of time in which she had disappeared completely. He had thrice found the beds of blood and lost himself for a time, coming to curled around himself in dark caves.

There were centuries of memory moving along with them as she strode homeward. If one had glimpsed out of the window of a passing car, there's no telling what they might have thought they were seeing. The sky was deepening blue, the geese flew overhead, honking to eachother. She was a startingly solitary, an impossible figure: very small, yet untouchable in the most graceful manner. Space opened and reacted to her glances. She did not carry the grumpled frown and downturned mouth of other elderly people, but had still an apple cheek, a lit eye. For a moment, she stood, with her hand flat pressed against the rough wooden surface of the high garden gate, feeling a deep buzzing sound coming through the soles of her feet, as she leaned into the doorway. Gently she fingered the latches on the fencepost built into the high brick walls.