Sons and Daughters of the Solitude: Sorrow
Interlude
I dreamed about you last night. And again today, when I was walking the mountains. If I could only step sideways, just so, I would come down into a world where you were by my side.
The silence of your absence is deafening, drowning me in sensation, far beneath the surface, where dreams can live and die in their own worlds, free of the painful algebra of necessity.
With each breath of sun-drenched air, the phantom echo of your footsteps becomes more tangible. I see your shadow ahead of me, and I smile, so full of an unthinking joy - I scarcely care that your image fades to nothing as you cross each sun-lit space between the pines, reality punching holes in the world of my heart.
In the rushing cathedral of pine and snow-melt streams, caught in the mindless rhythm of the trail, there is no thought, no ego, no mind.
When I drift into dreaming, my mind can no longer argue. You are a riptide, pulling me deep and far.
All dreams die.
I have spoken the truth to you - always. From the very beginning I have loved you and mourned you and waited for the right time to teach us both a brutal lesson.
Goodbye.
~
She sealed the letter that would never be sent. A cry of deepest sorrow rose within her and her mouth could not contain the wail of grief. It broke through her inner walls without a sound, and she wept, covering her silently screaming mouth with trembling hands.
In the end, she knew she had done the right thing. He was angry now - but with time, the lesson would settle into memory and he would be stronger and wiser for it. She had won.
What a terrible prize.