There I stood, looking at him again under the gaping blood-red sky. Had his eyes always been that blue, or his hands that large and dry? I couldn't remember.
Yet still I remembered everything; the way he smelled, how his auburn hair curled at the base of his neck; the sound of his voice as he loved me.
He was beautiful. Had this strange cool and slow way about him that was methodical and natural; Nomad-like, tall and earthy. He spoke little but we shared the silent, understood language of our youth. He never gave me much, but the small things that he left on my pillow were precious to me: A river rock; a hawk feather, a beaded necklace, a bronze ring that I lost on a hot summer night, somewhere in my mother's massive mint plant outside my old bedroom window.
He brought with him an old wind, and he carried the weight of the world upon him; a quiet sadness that was palpable. He possessed an air of simplicity that was deep and transcendent, and his lust for life was something that I wanted to steal from him. Those things in him, they were simple, and good, and I longed to have them, and they haunted my memory every day since that warm December morning when I said goodbye.
- a lifetime ago, it seems.
And we were here again, both defeated; a fraction of whom we 'de once been. Forty five years had come and gone, fading memories helped dissipate the sadness of goodbyes, and we stood looking at each other with nothing to say.
So we walked on.
We walked through the vast mesa and alongside the dry meadow that swept beyond the dirt road, and past the old barn to an unfamiliar cabin that bore no address. We stood there quietly, and I felt a strange wind come in, bringing with it an old familiar feeling of certainty.
And, he took my hand in his, and we walked inside the cabin, through the kitchen and up a flight of cavernous stairs that led to another, and yet another. And he took me in a beautiful old room that was filled with books, and feathers, and dried dead things that lived a thousand years ago. Then he smiled and handed me an old bronze ring that I faintly remembered, and he looked at me with familiar blue eyes, and he closed the door behind us, and I never left again.
Copyright Cristina Burk
