That Old, Old Love
I have an old, old love. It has gone soft and silent years ago in the wildforest’s graveyard of possibilities. If you get to visit, it is the grave that is a gently sloping hill coated in the soft grass of an eternal spring. It is the one ringed with wild white daisies. Its marker is a young tree grown from a lightning-hit fallen branch of that old, old tree on the street corner where the tower of Zaragoza stood.
Sometimes the ghost of this old, old love wakes up and wanders, and reminds me of itself. It walks into my dreams unannounced, with no preamble, and no obvious memory triggers. It comes and takes my hand and makes me remember and sometimes I get so angry and sometimes I just cry.
When I wake up after, the words will crowd on the tips of my fingers and I have to write something, anything, or else my heart will burst from a heavy absence. I need to empty that space again where nothing dwells but a sliver of hope trapped in the wrong parallel universe where there are only dead ends instead of dead rivals.
When I wake up after, the ocean in my heart will be a little less still, and the sky above it will be just a little darker. If I want to calm the storm I have to grow the flowers and summon the creatures to raise their voices for this old, old love to return to its rest beneath the soft daisy-ringed hill.
That old war story has long been over. I do not want to live it again. I do not want to fight it again.
