Were your soles wet or tickled by the flat reflection of that mountain lake? Are you here to save me?
Miles and miles around the shore become only a mile straight.
Twenty minutes of step over step become a flash unreal: action as a memory, the tedium compressed into a single instance of impatience and expectation. I breathe in through the nose as long and deeply as I might, more than I can, and here you are stepping off the water.
Your mirrored self marked a stunted rule straight to me but disappears into tiny, round stones that rise out of the lapping. The disturbance that is diluted off your feet across the water like smoke blown ripples still through the stones. You are marked by a gentle push of influence, displacing the solidity of a real world. You haven’t changed. The round lakestones and pebbles undulate with a power emanating off you. You haven’t changed.
But I can’t remember who you were. How would I? But you wouldn’t change. I don’t know how you could.
I could change you. Why would I? You’re perfect. You always were. I can’t remember who you were. I can’t even see your face.
Are you here to save me?
I’ve been waiting so, so long. I grown. I’m a man now. Where have you been? Why did you come back now?
Are you here to free me?
I never felt you in my arms. Not once. They were too small. You were the one who would hold. But now your head only comes to my chin and I wrap around you with handlengths to spare. Where have you been?
The wake of you continues up through my arms. My chest begins to heave against your gentle presence.
We have never been here. I wish I could have had the chance to bring you. I think she would have liked it. You would cherish any restful place. A restful place with someone like me. You could hold his hand sitting on a fallen log by the water. He would never shy away from her sweetness. They could sit there for hours just feeling the memories, breathing in the love because what air is there in a dream?
I can’t see their faces from back here, but her aged body no longer holds the vigor of a thirty-something. When did he outgrow her?
From some distance across the lake the details of the two are lost. They could be just another pair of mallards, green and drab and all gentle affection.
I think I know what they might be feeling, leaning into each other, unable to go away, like they have years and years and years to share. Years to share because they weren’t shared yet.
I think I could dream something like this. I think I would like to see someone again somewhere like this. I think I did once. Just now?
It seems like there was a woman walking toward me. Water. Was she walking by the surf or maybe around a lake?
I wish I could have seen whoever it was. I miss her. Who knows who? Maybe just a little bit of aimless nostalgia. Dreams never are too certain, hazy with emotion.
Still, I feel life lingering like a faint perfume after she left the room, all mixed in fading and doubt until there isn’t anything left to remember. I can only remember that I’ve lost it again.