Barely Noon

Underneath the sun, layering, bursting, coming into being was a curiosity forbidden.

Would today be the day?

When finally their hands would graze each other’s as falling leaves twirled around their feet before the grand fountain? How long she had waited for this to be. His touch, his smile, his devotion. Lost so long ago she could barely remember, and now, out of the blue, returned. A single glimpse at possibility and what could be. One step from truth, a moment detached from everyday toils, one hope fluttered through the cloudless sky.

Now, landed her vision. She held her hands close to her heart as his carriage approached and tiny turtledoves, a fairy tale, flanked the procession. This delivered to her, as she’d always dreamed as a little girl.

He opens the door. Steps out.

Sun bursting so brilliant she cannot see. So close.

But, Oh! Blindness! She falls to the ground, sinking, seeping into mud, sucked down into the quicksand of possibilities lost. She cranks her neck at the sound of heels, his soldier’s boots, stopping next to her.

A hand reaches down. She grabs it. Is pulled from the wreckage of her own obsessions.

Him. Her. Them.

It will not last. This much she knows. Because the sun is fading now. Too fast. Vanishing behind trees. Barely noon.

He lets go her hand, turns on his heel, walks away. Toward the house. Knocks.

Her sister opens the door. His bride-to-be.

A grand and glorious wedding celebration lauded across the kingdom.

Her sister’s belly large with child.

The baby arrives. Then another. And another.

Auntie dotes on them, toys, candy, kisses galore. She lives alone, but close enough to what could have been, harboring in the sea of her beloved’s happiness.

One day a storm descends. Her sister’s fury echoes across the land. He storms out the door. The children cry. He has squandered their money. All of it.

The family’s wrath is quick, merciless. He is cast out, banished. Her father takes in the sister, her children, the tatters of their once bountiful love.

In a distant and unfamiliar land, he fumbles, struggles, flees demons, hope for a resurrection that never comes. She spies him in her dreams, chased by crows, their faces intoxicated with hate, their bites relentless.

Death by a thousand pecks. Swirling, swirling into the depths of his own destruction.