~love and ashes

~prose and poetry....

He asked me why I was so interested in his love life. It was a fair question as we had been lovers once, and he was  sooo very good with words. I had already promised to marry someone else, so we both moved on. Like so many other romantic choices I have made did not end well. It was the lover after that who had done me in though. I had waited twenty-two years for that one. It was an unrequited love. Some part of him loved me, but not enough to walk through fire….hell, not even a few sparks, with me. For me it was the end of the romantic love that little girls dream of, but I was not a little girl any more, and a woman’s needs are much different than the Snow White fantasies of Walt Disney World inculcated into young girls “once upon a time.
.

My ex was trying to marry a Russian girl he had met online. He was a serial match.com junkie obsessed with Russian women. Four trips to Russia, and two usurped engagement rings later, he still had no bride. The latest dark haired Russian beauty, he referred to as his “split apart”. He had introduced me to Olga, and secretly I had hoped they would make it. The relationship was in yet another flaming nose dive, when he asked me why I was interested in his love life the answer was simple. He was still in love with the idea of love. In his sixties, he was chasing the Disney dream. The answer to his question lay in my reveries as I thought to myself…..

 

     Do you remember

 As sunrise is breaking, ecstatic, into a new dawn

blazing through the crisp winter skies.

… hardened heart be cold no more….

         for the doves tire of their mourning

as fervently they seek refuge in this land of sun

rising eternally dripping in warmth

 

Do you remember weeping at such soft caresses?

Willows sighing in envy,

when we lovers lay entwined like stars across galaxies,

filled with eternal wonder

lips pressing together,  tasting only ambrosia,

 

There was such grace in those moments.

 

Do you remember

 goblets overflowing with nectar?

Rivers of the finest wine

stained crimson upon faire countenance….

 Or the bountiful fields where we lay our heads

upon downy soft grasses in meadows of flowers in olde worlds

Kingdoms rose and fell

 while our Love….. abiding …outlasted them all

 

as from individuation to individuation

   I always found you

 

Time was only relevant when we were separated,

our ancient voices ringing throughout the heavens

ascribed with majesty and strength calling to one another

speaking in tongues from the many lands

wherein our Love reunited us …… always .. always

 

  this was love on fire… your epithet forever inscribed upon my “HeartCenter”

    

Do you remember?

 

My ex never spoke to the girl from Russia again. He is back to Match.com looking for another woman from Russia. The castle of Disney is crumbling, and little girls have grown into women who have learned that  “trust IS love” . Neurotransmitters and chocolate produce the same feelings of a new romance, but something enduring is built on substance. And while I have had the grace to find a heart willing to walk through both fire and light with me, there is still a part of me that hopes my ex will find the “One” that is encoded permanently into his heart. A part of me hopes he proves that love on fire really exists and can be sustained. Today he discovered a site for single Russian woman who want to connect with Americans. Disney is on fire and the ashes are blowing West..

 

©  Katherine Wyatt 2016 All Rights Reserved