The Vision

She came here expecting to see only a castle made of stone. She went inside and saw a work of love. Pale pink lights filtered through the stained glass windows illuminating the large room adorned with golden tapestry and she smiled knowing she’d tell him about it.

She sat by the side of the road in the blinding sun looking upwards at the picturesque mountains dyed in strokes of white and green. She reached the hotel room and lay on the bed feeling an all too familiar gnawing pain in her heart. Then suddenly she heard a knock on the door. She opened the door and a tall, beautiful boy was standing there warmly smiling at her.

“Hello”, he said simply.

“I can’t believe you are here. I missed you,” she said while embracing him really tight. She took him by the hand and slowly dragged him to the bed like in a dream haze. She felt real for the first time in a very long time.

Her red high heeled shoes, her ruffled white shirt, her rhubarb vanilla perfume. Did these things matter now?

“I wanted to tell you so many things. I’ve been thinking of death a lot recently”. She said and caressed his beautiful dark hair.

“Yeah me, too.”

“Why do  we have such a powerful feeling that things are going to last forever? Yet this moment might never happen again? Why do we long for immortality if it’s not in the nature of things?”

“I don’t know. Maybe our unhappiness and fear comes from the fact that we aren’t used to the idea that there is no permanence. Only uncertainty.”

Her laced stockings, her cherry flavoured lipstick, her antique bow and pearl earrings - she thought no one would see her wearing them.

“You smell so nice”, he said, kissing her all over.
The golden rays of the afternoon sun cast on the canopy bed where they embraced. The sounds of the train whistling in the night. A little round table in a Parisian café. The beach on a stormy day. A poppy field tenderly bending under the blue sky. Wandering through the halls at The National Gallery. The joy of discovering. Colourful sparkly stars exploding in the vast darkness. The rustling of the wind through the trees in an autumn forest. Peonies in a glass vase in a painting. Walking among ancient ruins, weaving together little broken pieces of dreams. It all seemed to flow together in an endless stream of peace and happiness.

“When I was kid, I used to go to the market here, down in the valley”, she said.

“We could go tomorrow.”

“Then we could go upwards to Furnica…”

“Sure.”

“Then we could…”

“Yeah… We will…” he said while kissing her harder.

She started to cry.

“What’s wrong ?” he said.

“It’s just… I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long… I wanted to see you again so badly… Now I remember what it feels like to be a part of everything, to be an expression of the whole universe that is embodied in you for a little while, and it’s not the thought that you are made of the same matter that make up the stars, the stones or the sand, it’s the meaningful connection you can have with another human being. Loneliness disconnects you. You really start existing the moment someone else cares for you. How else can you be sure that you exist? How do you know that you are real?”

“When you kiss someone you love and they kiss you back then you know that you are real.”

“Yes. I once saw a film about a woman who became invisible. She just one day started noticing that no one else can see her and she panicked. I feel like that too sometimes.”

“I’m sorry you had to be alone for so long. I wish I could make it up to you somehow.”

“It’s not your fault. Well maybe just a little…” she said jokingly. “You are so beautiful”, she said looking at him entranced, caressing his naked body. “I know you’ll leave soon. You always had to leave, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s only this moment that matters. This sacred space between us. The here and now. Being engaged in the present moment, delighting in it.”

“There is no present moment really”, she said smiling. “Only the past, pulling each instant backwards into the sketchy book of memory.”

She opened her eyes and smiled wiping out her tears. She lay still in bed looking around her but he wasn’t there. She got up and put on her fancy red shoes, the ruffled shirt and pink tweed skirt, and sprayed some puffs of rhubarb vanilla perfume that met into a litle cloud of dusty particles before quickly vanishing into the air. She caught a glimpse of her face in the oval mirror on the wall of the little hallway and looked apprehensively. She didn’t know who this person was. She moved away a little startled and headed towards the train station. Small drops of rain grew larger and larger and covered the platform she was standing on, waiting for the train to come. She stared at her red suede shoes and felt a little sad they would get ruined now in the rain, and he hadn’t seen her in them yet. No one has. She lifted her gaze towards the mountains, piercing through the depth of the pine tree forests that covered them. She then looked down at the winding railings that ran across one another farther in the distance only to diverge again. She got closer to the edge and waited. The darkness was starting to fall.