edges, lumps, trials

Her memory was slowing down, pushing forward with a great struggle like an old train in the dead of winter. Her skin sunk deep into the concavely structure of her tired bones. She wobbled with barely balanced steps, and carried her head with a shake in her neck. She couldn't remember much anymore.

He sat in his old leather armchair. His mind drifted from one thing to the next as he finely pondered his own life, moment by moment, year by year. He cradled an old photograph of her in his left palm, clammy and cold, shaky and abraded. The evening news blared on the television in front of him, but he didn't listen. He heard it all, but didn't listen. His attention was, instead, devoted to the beautiful young lady he held in his shriveled hand.

She carried herself lightly, as if she were the wind. She waltzed and swayed through life with twists and swoops and swift movements. Her eyes were the essence of grace, every inch of her skin was incandescently wrapped around her smooth and dainty bones. He could smell her. She was familiar to him then, that girl in the photograph. She was his darling, his light, his crown.

He wondered what she smelled like now. He wondered what pains life had taken her through, what pieces of her heart were missing. His eyes traveled over the photo--over her hair, her eyes, her nose, her shoulders, her chest, her waist, her knees, her feet. He wondered where in the world she was, what great many things she may have accomplished. He could see her dancing, and feel her.

As she stared out the window into the cold night, her head nearly falling from side to side, she watched the sky. The stars were out tonight. They reminded her of someone --  someone she might have loved once --  but she couldn't remember who. She held on to the stars. Clutching her cane with the weight of her small self, she stood and tried. She tried to remember who. She tried to remember a face, a name, a postcard, a hat. There was nothing familiar -- only the stars and a deep, quivering sensation that there was a part of herself that she was missing. But his face never came. Nor did his name, or the postcards he sent her for months, or the hat he wore to the train station. She held on to the stars, until she said goodnight and slowly walked the hallway to her quaint and quiet bedroom.

His face was loose and wrinkled, but his mind was sharp and wandered across the edges and lumps and trials of life and time. He missed her. He really did. But see, he thought, isn't it strange how love doesn't age? And yet I'm about ready to kiss the world goodbye, and to rest in my grave as an old, weathered man?
He pressed his tired lips onto her beautiful photograph. He whispered that he'd find her somewhere, and that he'd never stop loving her. Not ever.

But there she rested, silent and sleeping, forgetting it all.
And there he sat.
They had lost each other nearly 60 years ago and still...

They were apart now.