all in forms

In the limbo hours, after nightfall but far away from the warmth of dawn, we find each other in the garden I used to visit as a child. I meet you where I had often sat alone, a sullen youth on a white bench, under an arch of roses. In my younger years I was possessed by unrequited love and sitting there I had once dreamed and longed to one day take a woman who could also love me in return to that magical place. I had wondered at how the moonlight would at once heighten her beauty and that of the garden, the shadows not sinister, but places for touching, holding, exploring each other.... Now I am in the garden again and the pale night shifts around your dress as you walk towards me, no phantom or ghost but something even more beautiful and real than my childhood fantasies could dream up. The night has drained everything of colour, swallowing up the silence of the garden like a silent film, so we do not even need to speak. Your eyes are wide, hungrily taking all of me in, as you stand in front of me. It’s been too long, they seem to say, and I nod, my heart tripping as I rush to reach out to you. Suddenly I realise the miles you have travelled, through the night, across rivers, fields; your chest rising and falling breathlessly. I pick a petal out your hair, it is from a flower that does not bloom here, its scent unknown to me. I step closer, just inches from you, to retrieve the scent that I do know well, so well that is woven into the palms of my hands, my mouth, the soles of my feet. You smile, that wonderful half smile that I adore, twisting up to the corner impishly. Delighted, you know exactly the effect you being here has on me, the night journey worth every mile. How can you be warm, standing there just in your nightdress in the cold darkness, I wonder, no shoes on, mud up your legs, so wild and free and I cannot make sense any of it. You sense my questioning and just tilt your head, pleading to me, no don’t struggle, hold on my dear, hold on. I close my eyes and open them, you are still there, reassuringly. Somewhere far away, the night shudders and the birds in the nearby trees are shaken from slumber. My favourite sound of summer begins above us, the pigeon cooing, a song-sigh of love in wooded green places, shattering the silence. I am trying so hard, like you said, but the oncoming morning causes me to stumble and as my tears fall they land on you, your image flickering like an old television. For a second you disappear and then come back, but your smile has vanished, replaced only with a frown. It says to me, we must try darling, try to hold the moment in our minds together, preserve the thought-embroidered bridge that links us across the miles. Still, I am restless, turning, shifting, fidgeting and momentarily I open my eyes somewhere else. For a brief moment I return back to the garden, and I turn around again and again. The same bench, the same roses like before, the same pigeon cooing up above me but no you. I close my eyes again and at the same time the morning brushes the petal into my hand. Opening them for the final time, I open my hand, expecting it to tumble out, yet it does not. Frantically, I open and close my hands like I had done with my eyes, but this time nothing changes. Like you, the garden has vanished around me too and I am alone with just a cold bed for company. I press my hand to my mouth to muffle the sobs, and suddenly the smell of the petal laced with your delicate perfume engulfs me like a wave. Eventually, I drift back to sleep, the hand still in place, my tears dried, longing to return to the garden, longing for you.