Time Fades All Wounds

At a headstone too personal, I might someday stare like she does. She’s wispy, a scant reflection of the shape that once formed her. Flesh melts quickly. Did she watch as hers waned into a puddled mass, draining into the dust we come from, reabsorbed into other life, other marriages of spirit and matter. Eventually even bones crumble leaving nothing but the memory of a body’s shape and motion. The hitch of her step, the slight crook to her teeth, the healed scar of her once broken arm, last remnant of a misguided bike ride, all signs that might still be read by knowing eyes, all evidence of her individuality will cave into dirt.

A soul might sit staring till the trees grow old and die. She might be here when people are gone and the wars of ants savage the land, but she won’t know the cold of the stone bench and the hot liquid feel of the sun on her skin. She’ll forget the vibration of her voice and the precise pitch at which she spoke. She doesn’t know the added weight of funeral black and the diamond lump in a throat.

Maybe it used to hurt when she walked, maybe the air burned its way into her lungs, maybe it had been harder and harder for her to pull herself from bed. Like a marriage gone bad, maybe she cursed her body and its betrayal.

I can pull my hands together and recall the feel of fingers woven through mine. I can mix chocolate chip cookies for the smell that carries memories. I can feel the tickle of little ant feet across the back of my hand.

The wispy figure turns to me, an empty reflection, a met gaze lacking eyes. She fades. I feel the shiver down my spine like footsteps across my grave. I wrap arms around my body, grateful to have a true mate for my soul.

Visions

            I watched him through the fringe of my lashes, trying and yet not, to see. His too lean form lay framed by the bench, unmoving. My friend’s laughter interrupted, rang like a gold bell in the silver silence of my concentration. I hadn’t been following the conversation, but I smiled anyway, content with inclusion in our little flock of hens. Huddled in our winter coats, lingering (after what might be called our daily hike but was actually more meander) to chatter and share pleasant nothings, warmth was infectious between us. I studied my friend’s round crinkled features: her smile was wide and thick, her eyes like bright brown beads—I swear she glowed somehow from beneath her skin. I wondered if she saw him, that wraith on the bench. If she felt the disquiet I could see emanating from him like heat waves off a highway, or stench lines in a comic.

            The other women, I didn’t know them well and yet we were a collective, paid no notice to his presence. They, all of them, were older than I, and I was led to wonder if theirs’ was wisdom’s path. Yet those wavy comic lines seemed tied to my eyes. I couldn’t help but feel their tug. He was faceless, buried in layers of rag coat and clothes. A backpack stretched too thin around what could be presumed were all his worldly possessions. And maybe a few more. I remembered the shattered glass and shattered look of my friend earlier in the year; her money and her faith stolen. He shifted. I clutched the small change in my coat pocket and was disgusted by the swampy damp of my hand.