She sat alone at a table for two, by the cafe's front window. In the stream of afternoon brilliance she was a creature made of light, wrapped in golden splendor and woven from the restless memories of endless summer days. In the sun's light, she smiled with casual grace, looking on with interest, relaxed in the comforting assurance of an inner secret that no one else could understand.
She loved to come to places such as this, to watch the passing people like exotic picture postcards, each one a tiny slice of life coming from a different world. What would it be like to look at life through another person's eyes? No one could ever really know, but in this place she felt that she could at least glimpse a piece of the lives that passed by her, in and out, like the sun's rise and fall.
Looking through the cafe window, she could see a young couple walking along the street hand in hand, surrounded by the glow of youth and love. They were a single bubble, floating between the lampposts, past the newspaper stands and shop windows. The girl's hair was highlighted by the summer sun beams as she pointed toward the cafe. The door opened and they were at the threshold, standing close together. At the table by the window a memory surfaced like spring water:
She stood outside again, at the airport, with the wind blowing through her hair and swirling the skirt around her legs. She held on to his arm silently. There was nothing left to say now except “Goodbye.” On her hand was a new ring; in her heart was a silent wish that she knew could not be fulfilled, for sometimes there are more urgent matters in the world than love. A single auburn hair lay curled like a long silk thread on the shoulder of his uniform. Reaching out, she plucked it off the fabric and opened her fingers to let it go in the wind. “Goodbye.” The word slipped away in the warm breeze, like the shimmering hair, curling away into the emptiness all around. They kissed one last time before he walked away, his steps the solid gait of a soldier. The plane took him away that day, but it never brought him back.
The cafe door closed again, the young couple walked away down the street. Somehow the room seemed more empty in the wake of their passing. An old woman sat at a table by the window, her hair white in the sun's warm glow. She took a last sip of tea, set the cup back onto the saucer with a gentle clink, and carefully got up from the table, reaching for her cane.
What would it be like to look at the world through another person's eyes?
Fledgling Dreams
Labels: Prose
She woke in the night to find herself looking up at the starry night heavens. The walls of her bedroom, the roof over her head, they were familiar things to be taken for granted, but now they were gone, and above her raw, pure night looked down with silent benevolence. The girl sat up in surprise, wondering if perhaps she had slipped into some strange dream more real than life.
She was still in bed, the familiar blankets slightly rumpled over her body, hanging over the edge of the mattress. But the mattress was suspended in thin air, gently rocking, like a boat drifting through clear water. A cool night breeze tickled over the girl's skin and blew through her dark hair. She pulled the blankets closer to her body and peered over the edge of the mattress. Far below her soft, pastel pink clouds hung in the air like drifts of cotton candy lit from underneath. Through a break in the clouds the girl could see city lights, as small and distant as the bright stars above her.
For a few seconds the girl looked downward. The clouds below were so crisp, so clear, each wisp defined against the night darkness, slowly drifting through the air, dispersing like mist, only to come together again in billowing drifts. Always changing, never still, the cloud's restless movement filled the girl with awe at the shear size, the vastness, of each cloud. How many clouds like these drift through the sky unnoticed and unconcerned, while on the ground humans live out their petty lives? Struggles, desires, and passion are meaningless in the expanse above our heads.
The girl stood up on the mattress in her thin cotton nightgown, arms across her chest against the slight chill. Above her in the night sky silver stars shimmered. She knew that the starlight she was seeing had traveled through the cold emptiness of space for millions of years to reach this point in time, the time she could call now. Across the vast unexplored distance, the star that produced tonight's starlight was probably cold and dead, or else it had already expended its last energy in a powerful supernova, the light of which would not reach Earth for untold thousands of years. But right now, at this place, at this time, the sky sparkled with cold starlight like beautiful jewels just out of reach.
The girl opened her arms to the nighttime splendor, as if to embrace the clouds, the stars, the open night around her. She felt like a fledgling bird perched at the edge of its nest, spreading its soft downy wings to the world below. A gentle breeze blew the girl's hair out behind her and made the bottom of her nightgown dance around her legs. The wind called to her, caressing her with its passing touch; free drifting spirits, dancing across the sky to music that only she could hear, as delicate as the shining stars, as vast as the clear night air, as soft as the wispy pink clouds.
She wanted to dance with the wind, to join with it in its aimless but beautiful travel, but she knew she was not ready, like a newly hatched bird with wings not yet strong enough to fly. The night breeze chilled her and she slid back down between the warm blankets, laying her head back on the pillow. A soft lullaby played in the distance, and sleep came the girl like a quiet friend.
She woke the next morning as the first golden rays of sunlight trickled through her bedroom window, pouring across the room with the warmth of life and love. Staring into the glowing sunbeam, blinking in the morning light, she felt that there was something she was forgetting: a dream, something beautiful, something that she should remember. But it was lost in the depths of her mind, just out of reach, and she yawned and sat up, the moment by now passed and gone forever.
Amaryllis
Labels: Prose
To most people the amaryllis is a nothing more than a pretty flower. Perhaps they have received one during the holiday season, a gift from some distant relative, candy cane crimson, cultivated in a greenhouse so that it would bloom in winter. But the amaryllis outside my window is different; it was given to me on the day of your funeral, not as a blooming plant, but as a shriveled bulb in a cardboard box. I never found out who gave it to me. Sometimes I like to think that perhaps you left it for me yourself, setting it on my porch in its unmarked box, but I know that is impossible.
At first I planned to throw away the bulb, for I had enough of flowers. They spilled over the tables and off the mantle, lined up along the wall in their crystal vases, filling the house with the cloying scent of their blooms. But flowers could never fill the space you left behind, and I knew that they would fade away, for they had been severed at the peak of their bloom, even as you had. How I hated those flowers! But each visitor who came brought more with them and it would have seemed rude to throw them away.The amaryllis bulb, though, was different. Unlike the other flowers, this bulb was not a blooming facade that would soon fall away. It was real, and it promised potential, a rebirth. If I followed the instructions carefully and buried it in the ground it would eventually send up its curved green leaves, and finally a great red bloom would appear.
I buried the bulb in the soil outside, and as I pushed dirt back into the hole I saw the shovels tossing dirt down onto your coffin. At that moment I felt somehow that if the amaryllis bloomed, then perhaps you too would return to me.
I cared for the amaryllis two years before it bloomed. Long after the cut flowers had died and their vases had been banished to gather dust in a distant cupboard, months after the funeral when other people slowly stopped visiting me, no longer keeping the sadness at bay, the amaryllis was still there. I could see it every day outside my window and I hoped with all my heart that it would survive, like my memories of you.
The amaryllis did survive, and on the second year it sent up a stalk with one great bud, solid and firm. I watched the flower open, and when I saw it reveal its vivid interior I finally understood that a person is not a bulb planted in the ground, and I accepted your death as a change that no amaryllis bloom could ever reverse.
