Walking. Feeling the crispness of morning air soften against my skin, clutching a makeshift grey shawl around me, knowing that here is where my heart belongs. Loving all the quiet bustle of a small college town, how translucent leaves rustle around me and rise and fall; like a frothy wave against the shore. I take one step, then another, beginning to run, my breath catching slightly as I turn a corner. In another lifetime, I could be a discontented wife, the faint edge of rebellion in a sweet-lipped face. For a moment, the reflection in the stone basin of water reveals all the fine lines she might have possessed, the golden-brown curls of hair over her ears. My finger ripples across the surface, breaking the elusive moment of memory, and I am myself again. There is a faint charm in my image that the glass occasionally grants. A certain piquant tone of the small mouth; a trick of the profile.
I have grown to hate mirrors.
When I am very old, I will not look into them. Instead I will hang paintings of beautiful women and peer into their faces. Botticelli's Venus, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Madame Monet, Mrs. Renoir, Mary Cassatt's mothers. Women of lush, pre-Raphelite beauty, enough to weep for. Beauty as I never held it, as no one could ever see in my plain face.
And I will take walks in the park, moving slowly in a pale green sweater--- the same colour, I will think, as springtime-- drinking in moments too short for my eighteen year old self, like the fragile dance of grass in tiny breezes.
Once, just once, I will glance at the flat, glossy panel of glass that reflects the image of a small old woman, and see the dark-eyed girl that loved life so fiercely some sixty years ago, and remember the walk I took one cold September morning.
And I will stand there for a moment, feeling chillded air against bare arms, seeing the sparkling bits of broken glass on the road, and feeling the wonderful sense of freedom that led me under the Trees that day. Sheer poetry, I will think wistfully. Love, of course, will follow, and beauty will lend its subtle perfume to experience, but never was there such a sense of purity and dedication as in that spellbound dream.
Walking on, forgettng what was important then, remembering groceries now, but the heart alone knows, and action cannot dictate to it.
I have grown to hate mirrors.
When I am very old, I will not look into them. Instead I will hang paintings of beautiful women and peer into their faces. Botticelli's Venus, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Madame Monet, Mrs. Renoir, Mary Cassatt's mothers. Women of lush, pre-Raphelite beauty, enough to weep for. Beauty as I never held it, as no one could ever see in my plain face.
And I will take walks in the park, moving slowly in a pale green sweater--- the same colour, I will think, as springtime-- drinking in moments too short for my eighteen year old self, like the fragile dance of grass in tiny breezes.
Once, just once, I will glance at the flat, glossy panel of glass that reflects the image of a small old woman, and see the dark-eyed girl that loved life so fiercely some sixty years ago, and remember the walk I took one cold September morning.
And I will stand there for a moment, feeling chillded air against bare arms, seeing the sparkling bits of broken glass on the road, and feeling the wonderful sense of freedom that led me under the Trees that day. Sheer poetry, I will think wistfully. Love, of course, will follow, and beauty will lend its subtle perfume to experience, but never was there such a sense of purity and dedication as in that spellbound dream.
Walking on, forgettng what was important then, remembering groceries now, but the heart alone knows, and action cannot dictate to it.