For Yara & The Elf
The world has fallen quiet; there’s a softness about its edges that brings a somber peace I am not yet ready to accept, and so I bury myself here in the reminiscence of you — in all that you made us — the delicate threads of our connection, woven densely and tightly over so much time, but severed in an instant; petals on the wind.
As always, the river runs faithfully — cool waters cascading over rocks and green life, reflecting the pink and blue-gray of the clouds. Sun washes its banks, and I lie back in tall grasses, fading flowers, and wild herbs. They frame my view and sway on dry, fragrant breezes that hint at the changing season, the turning tide. Lost in the warm touch of summer’s final moments, autumn will leave you behind, forever embraced in the lush gravity of this space. So much life and care in those years that brought us here. Toward the story’s end, I imagine they had become lost to the shadow behind your eyes, but I remember and remain fixed in the moments of tenderness that fastened the togetherness of our hearts; beating as one even longer than memory allows.
My hand makes outreach, fingertips touching at the velvety softness of the sage leaf, one of so many surrounding me. The ground is littered in a soft bed of dried, brown blooms. They were glorious in the spring of our lives. Stacked purple peaks would reach out like sentinels as far as the eye could see. The colors of this place have diminished, though; I will be unable to appreciate their beauty again, not in this solitary existence so far from the currents of your presence.
There is an exhaustion in my soul that imbues my emotions with stoicism, but sometimes, and now, your absence grabs at my guts, and I writhe internally with the permanence of my loneliness. Grief rolls over and through me as though I’m a tattered raft on an angry sea. You’ve left me helpless on the waves of this plane and try as I might with oceans in my eyes, I am unable to reach you. Tell me, orchestrator of my inner-most flame, how do I reach you?
I feel you occasionally in the light of the stars and in beautiful things like the river, the mountain peak, and the golden glow of the sunset. What is this that you have become? How can I see you in these things — these elements and natural forces? Your voice is in the leaves and your touch is in the soft bed of soil at my back. Your eyes are in the brilliance of the blue day and your lips are on the tender petals of the meadows. How I would issue a wizard’s whisper and brush each one to heal and restore you. I wish you knew.
Black blood overtakes all when the corruption seeps in and grows with malignancy in our hearts and minds. I watched your affliction as it bore you from me — as I grew further from you even in our closeness, and I fought against the noise and the battle that raged in your body as it broke. I gave and bargained with the forces — both perceived and concealed — to tether you here. To remind you of what we had made in those early days when the pale light of the dawn was new, and we were unbound by our fates and the inescapable setting of the sun.
This will be my last visit to the river’s edge, my final memory of our history and the countless ways we came together. Now, as the evening star reveals itself, I am made hollow and small in the notion of chance. In a sky spattered with countless stars, how did our lights match; how did you find me and make me this? A heartbeat alone on the bank, in the grass, surrounded by aromatic recollections of our experience as one. So small even in the complexity of my sorrow; completely anonymous in this space with the sprawling sky, my only witness.
I feel you departing this place; its peace stabs me like a betrayal of a friendly sword. The reality of what is cannot be undone and I grapple with a thousand fingers to hold you close as you continue to slip away, our memories veiled and fading. I battle the tides of the ages and wrench your heartstrings as I can, lashing them to my essence until I hold you fast in my very bones. What can it be to keep us locked as one, so time will not forget? Is it memory or matter, word or deeds? It cannot be promises or passions — pacts or secrets.
No.
Only love.
Only love can bind.
