A FLASH FOR YOU

A flash that hasn't a home. A free offering to the blogosphere. Something and nothing. Take it!

USED TO BE

Used to be it was all fields. Remember. As far as the eye could see. Here was once the outer edge of the city and stepping beyond this point was like entering into a different place. All tall grass and twisted trees and birdsong and butterfly flight. Do you remember? Walking, side by side, in step, your hand in mine and it was enough and it was everything and there was such a thing as forever then.

‘What’s the point of remembering?’ she says.

It’s all gone now. Those fields and the butterflies and the birds. The city has stretched its stiff limbs and the world is changed and now there are streets and houses where once we walked. People must have places to sleep and so I do not complain; but, if it’s alright, I want to take a moment here, with you.

She exhales and rolls her eyes, or she would if she was really there.

Something has been lost. Years and years have been tossed aside, too easily, and we are brought back to the start, only it does not feel like the start anymore. I loved you then. I think I did. Love you now, though it makes no sense to say it. And here’s where it was. Where we were. Where it all began.

‘We see things differently,’ she says.

Yes, yes. I know. Dammit! But there was a time, don’t you remember, a brief snatched time-out-of-time, and we stood together and what we saw then was closer than it ever would be again, our vision of what could be was something shared. Only later it changed.

‘We can’t go back,’ she says.

But if we could. If for one day we could. For just one hour. To stand on the edge of things and the future laid out before us, all singing and flitting and grass-whispers, and knowing what we know now, would you wish it any different from how it was? Would you?

She is silent.