01-19-2016, 11:15 PM
Once, she was as innocent as a cove unspoiled by trespassers but they have since trespassed against her.
The spoils of their trespasses are grown and gone from her of course, fruits that have long since soured in her memory - she hasn’t forgotten the one lovely daughter that takes after her, or the two strapping sons that needed her less than she needed them. They filled her time, eased the ache of her loneliness for a year or two, and like a cyclonic gust of wind, they were gone and she was alone again with her lovely sorrows and the toll age once took upon her bones. She can recall their faces in brief passing like a quick rain shower in the middle of a sunbright day and they are gone again.
Never once had they consecrated their love with a child.
Their love was never so lucky or long-lived for that.
She remembers there was only time for them, then no time at all and each was gone off on a different path in life and she cannot recall how they came to such a fork in the road or why he walked off without her and she never fought for him to stay beside her. Her face shows the shadow of memory and a hint of a frown but it passes the closer he gets to her, and she is shy beneath his scrutiny. The way he looks at her is not entirely uncomfortable but she senses his disbelief - it clouds her own face actually, makes it pinch together in a not so lovely way as she regards him, feeling spry and alive and thinking just like him, that each is not how they remember them to be but they’re both real, right?
“Yes,” she says, a little more breathlessly then she would like but he still has that effect on her - to snatch her breath away, just like a sunset can, beautiful and timeless and never the same. Except she feels better - more alive somehow, not that she could explain that to him - that she had gone off to die finally, to stop pining away for him (how pathetic!) and a love that was never to be more than it had been, except… and what more is there to say then that? Except she’s here and she looks at him like she’s been given a second chance and she does what he cannot - she reaches out and touches him, just the barest brush of her nose against his same bay skin and she breathes him just that quickly and feels like she’s come home again.