| Butler Pennsylvania 5
First Love For N. I She seemed to bob on her sister's matted silver bike I would watch for, not yet able to reach the high seat, working her way up car-free Penn Street, and I would make as if I hadn't seen her when she came pedaling past the window where I was waiting. After she was out of sight I learned what emptiness was and felt its keen brutal lance being thrust as if by my own hand to fill the void she had left in my heaving chest. But worst of all was evenings in autumn when she would pedal home down across Main Street out through the smoke of leaves burning at the street curbs, with the moon accompanying her a soft round lantern hanging above her in the trees. II She was older now and we had gone our ways but she would come walking down Penn Street past my window every Friday evening at exactly ten minutes to eight carrying her violin case and I would stand there behind a thin curtain, waiting. Her rich black hair flowed long, at times a stray strand streaked down over her eye brushing back past a pendant earring. Once she came in a rainstorm and I, timid, rushed out to umbrella her only to watch her hurry off into gray evening darkness. But I did see her ravelled hair dripping, her face wet, her pure skin gleaming and that smile, the kind I felt she would only kindle for me and no one other— Ah, she was more beautiful then than she had ever been before. I would watch her walk upright, buoyant, her visage shining her very carriage betraying her being loved already by someone worthier than I who had inched his way into what I thought was our walled-in paradise. Could it be just by chance, I asked, that she was thinking of me as she looked straight ahead walking past, smiling thoughtfully? What pain was caused to me by my inadequacy to muster charms I lacked and character enough to aspire to her high caste. How that loss has haunted me, that wound festered over the years. There has been no escaping no cure, no way back to where that treasure was that ever after I have lacked. Often I would wake at night trembling, calling out her name. One rainy night I thought I saw her through the curtain standing at my window holding out her hand. Then I remembered the thread we once said we had spun between us, tender and thin, each from our own end and fused where they met to bind us together for all time to come. Flinging back the curtain my eyes met hers and she smiled, like she had done then. In her hand she held her thread offering it to me lovingly— and I, with hands extended with fingers outstretched strained to take hold, yet all my attempts kept falling short of that precious holy cord. III We were but children then in a Garden of Eden just made for two, where nothing else mattered but you were loved by me and that I was loved by you. Now the longing for that, my Long-lost Love, has brought you back anew, so I have begun to love you with that pure innocent love our childrenhearts once knew. Next Home |
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