I can still see where I ran my fingers through her hair. She has left my side and stands before the french doors, her hand on the knob. Sunlight falls through the panes, illuminating the front of her. She wears a white dress. Her red hair is an aura around her pale beaming face. She looks through the french doors to something I can not see. Even were I to stand by her side gazing through beams of sunlight, I could not see what has caught her gaze. I call her name, but I know she can not hear me. And I guess that if she could she would not remember me, so compelling is the vision beyond the french doors. Not seeing, not hearing, not remembering the room behind her. The chair and the desk, the narrow stairs to the bedroom, the vase full of spring flowers from the garden, just beyond the door that leads into the kitchen. What happens to memory when we let go of it? Does it bear seeds that will germinate in a distant spring? Does it bloom for those we will not meet in later generations? Do seasons pass in the heart the way they do on earth?
She turns the knob and slowly, as if afraid to let the wind into the room she does not remember, she pushes. And still I can see the spaces my fingers made in her shining hair. The paths of my love and dedication, my commitment and keeping. Does she feel my fingers almost touching her scalp the way I still feel the soft threads of her hair on my skin? No. She takes another step and has forgotten even her own hair. Has left behind the memory of skin and touch. The french doors open all the way, letting in the light unimpeded. I can barely see her now. Swallowed. Becoming the vision she sees.
“Please, don’t go,” I murmur.
But, as if my weak voice were a spur, she is gone.
Light floods through the french doors onto the floor, the desk, the chair, the stairs, into my lap. The sunlight is warm, like her presence beside me, like the light in her eyes, like her smile. It falls upon me revealing contours of fullness and emptiness. Making the emptiness ring cold and clear like a bell. The sound of it a shiver aching through me. Pools of watery memory, wells of soul, untouched by light or wind, shine in the suddenness of sun and warmth falling over me like a veil. I cry, touching the memory of myself. The memory of her hair, like a butterfly on my breast fanning its wings in the sun. I open my eyes. Outside rain washes the house in a symphony of whispering sound. Pale light fills the room seeming to come from everywhere. The french doors are closed. I am alone. This house is a dot in a vast emptiness stretching forever in every direction. This house is a cup with which I must measure the measureless. Time is shaped by the quality of our memories. Where my fingers run through her hair lives eternity.
