Love Once

Her fragile body trembled in the first dry chill of her last fall. She stepped out in the darkness of the night garden, almost naked, enjoying the feeling of cold leaves crushing under her bare feet.

Her skinny hands went up towards the starry sky in harmony with the longing of her body:

“Touch my face with your cold hands,” she whispered to the wind.

The reply was an anguished howl.

Under the black velvet skin of the night, a heap of dust and smoke stood in front of her, portraying her broken dreams, her wasted youth. Nothing was left to pray and care for. Everything seemed to be gone forever.

Staring at the aged oak tree, she whispered “love once, live once,” remembering when they scratched their names together underneath. That night she experienced her first fall: falling in love.

He had cancer. He died. He was only twenty. She seventeen. When he died, she stayed loyal, talking only to the night. The silence taught her how to stay awake and repeat the memory of the first and last kiss she had ever had, touching and hugging the oak tree in the memory of him.

Twenty years she went on with that memory, twenty years of broken windows and ruined dreams. She was present there, out in the dark every night since; in the heat of the short summer nights and over the freezing snow of the bleak winter ice. She went on keeping the fire that burnt her once, live in her blood.

And now here she was, going for her second fall, her face covered in tears; the tears that she kept from flowing down for twenty years. She was in love again.

With her closed eyes, she kissed the carving goodbye. The rain came to wash her tears; the wind carried her to him.

The night stayed dark, hugging the oak tree tight: love once, live once.