Dairy of a Madman

Her name was Elisa. As hard as I try, that’s all I can remember; I know that there’s more, and that somewhere stuck in my head, I have more. But the only thing that I can dredge from the murky depths is Elisa.

She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t picture her at all anymore. The best I get today is a smoky blur before the breeze picks up and blows her image away from me, wisps of incense in a hurricane. But I remember the beauty, the way my stomach clenched every time I saw her face, an angel given form.

Somewhere along the path, I fell in love with her, and I think she with me. I can’t be sure. There are words, but they might as well be in Aramaic, Korean, hieroglyphs dancing just out of reach. I laughed a lot with her, and talked into the shadowy hours when we should both have been sound asleep and dreaming, but we were dreaming with our eyes open, and that was good. Responsible adults were other people.

Sometimes, when I’m walking on the lawn, the wind shifts and the rain approaches from the east, and something on the air reminds me of her. I can’t place it, can’t cage that scent, but I know it’s there and suddenly, for all too brief an instant, the world spins its cyclone dance around me and I’m back in her arms, she trying so hard to get me to dance with her, gossamer threads of hair brushing my cheek, lips pressed against my cheek, and I can hear her voice again, whispering promises of tomorrow to me sweetly. And the moment passes, like all moments do, but I can carry that smile for days.

Memory fails, but dreams remain.