Dry, twisted leaves fell to cover the flat, brown earth outside the stone of his home. The leaves twirled in various directions upsetting the focus of the eye. He rather liked the gloom of this day, the low sun and heavy clouds.
He turned then, abruptly, as he heard the shaking of the barn door outside. And there he walked, concerned, to find his discovery sitting on a tyre, affixed to a rope, swinging. Her smile was distinctly warm, brighter than he had ever seen it, and the edges and lengths of her hair undulated in the wind. He was hypnotised by this woman and all her details. But he did not love her. Beauty was a whole other idea to what love was. He had loved, but she was gone.
As if sensing the change in his thoughts, with the disappearance of the smile he had first displayed upon seeing her there, she twisted, like the leaves did as they fell, scrawny and stem like, and left the tyre swinging on its own to find him, his hands, his shoulders, squeezing squeezing, her movements always 2/2, to reassure him.
“You cry?”
He shook his head, dismayed.
“Why do you look at me so?
He looked down and let go her hands, without a squeeze, or a smile, and returned to the window to watch the weather. It would storm tonight.
How could he admire her. How could he when his wife was dead?
But that night while the rain came down and he sat reading in his favourite highback, embroidered chair, Talisa came upon him, hands coloured in vespertine shadows, lavender dark slivered in white, tattooing her arms as she clasped the back of the seat.
“You mourn for her. But she is gone”
He turned, quicksmart, as though, she considered, he expected her, had drawn her to him with his forlorn will.
His mind raced and raced, “you’re here, you’re here you damn white beauty”
Her sable eyes, flecked in blue, reminiscent of blue smoke off the mountains, hurtling him where he was won’t to go.
She circled the arm of the chair and settled herself on one knee, two legs clinging to one, and held his face.
Lightning filled the sky, as his longing found her own.
