Her hair, a mess, a deep mess, in the wind, blowing like a black flag from hell. I could see it, long and graceful against the afternoon clouds, making her seem less flesh and more nonexistent. Walking along the beach’s caves I saw her, her mess of a hair, hair that gave away to a thin body, suspended over the bridge, her knees bent, only suspended, just suspended, any finger out of place and she would fall into the cold waters under her feet, that strangely weren’t trembling in fear or regret. She looked ominous like an angel, decided as if her fate was upon her back telling her what to do. My hand was over my chest, my eyebrows knitted into a surprised frown; and I started walking along the shoreline, never minding the water that sprayed over my boots and made my socks wet.

I got close enough to see her, and I saw her delicate olive toned skin and her eyes closed, her lips moving silently or maybe I just didn’t hear her above the dips and curves of the noisy river. So portentous was the look in her face, those eyes closed, those hands holding onto the bridge’s bars and those thin lips moving, that she looked suddenly in that second like a living mirrored image of Christ upon the cross, and if I had been religious, I would’ve gone down on my knees thinking it was really Jesus in his glory. But now, I was only a man for life, a man with no belief, for the only truth I had known up until that moment was-

(The touch of her hair and the smile in her eyes can you feel it was you start to push your heart towards your mouth and she rips it from you and)

I called out to her, and it seemed like she was praying, because she tumbled out of her ethereal, emotionless gaze and looked at me with such cruel, questioning eyes that I had to take a step back. Those eyes, green, green that seemed to flow in through the air that I inhaled and started carving my insides into frail, useless things, for they gazed at me with such a glare, hair flowing in and out, a nightly thing upon her head, an immense black sky without a gleam of stars, that seemed to have more life than her body did. She closed her eyes yet again, and she started moving her lips yet again, uttering silent whispers to the wind which no one will hear, like a penniless man’s last words which no one will remember, no one but the cement concrete and the alley cats and the streetlights, and even they will eventually die. I did not know what to do, she had such resolve that anything I may do would be useless, as she would just jump and the story would end as quickly as it had started. I looked at those shaping lips, lips pink as glowing roses, as skin after making love. They flowed and came in and out, then were licked by a tongue as red as wine, then moved in oscillated gestures, and she would shut her eyes tighter, as if trying to make everything go away. And, as strange as it may seem, I found myself lulled by those lips, a lullaby, a lullaby like a tide, constant, moving, seething and giving. And I wanted to, I started yearning, for those lips as pink as cheeks after making love, I wanted to taste them in my mouth, and wanted to feel them on my skin. Maybe a taste, before she stormed into the stormy waters and her life would not be forgotten. At least not by me.

I called out yet again, desperate, yearning, yearning just like she yearned for death. I started getting nearer to the water, it soaking the ends of my pants now.

Her chest was heaving very large breaths, great heaves of air, as if saying sorry to her lungs which would be the very cause of her defunct. The wind blew stronger now, and the water moved and moved like an inamorato, sensually teasing her with relief, relief to all her pain, whatever pain she might’ve felt, but I had no idea. What, in the world and everything in it, has caused her to feel such pain? To make her think that giving in to this freight paramour, to jump into its freezing skin and get lost in its obscure haze without knowledge of time or space or where or when, would make all the hurt fade. Her knees where bent now, steady, steady as she goes, and her arms where starting to loosen, with her hair protesting madly and her green, cold eyes shut while she bit those voluptuous lips, and then,

(To taste you in my mouth and hear your voice in my air again, sweet lover, how could you have abandoned me after all the blood I’ve bled for you sweet little ghost, my little phantom you have taken all of me with you-)

She let go.

I jumped into the waters, leaving my boots among the sands of the beach, and began fighting the wind and the sensual waters, them teasing me with doom and salvation, traitorous salvation. I swam as much as I could, lifting my head up above the waters to see if I could find her, but the wind again won me, and I was overturned and overwhelmed by the tide and the wind the freezing cold, almost as cold as those green eyes, and more than ever I wanted to fight, even though I didn’t even know her, I wanted to fight for that precious life. I swam and swam, water fresh in my mouth, my arms looking for other arms, my eyes wide in the cold water, and I would go farther and farther into that malicious river, trying to find a girl with starless hair and olive toned skin. I tried to come up for air, but I could not. I just couldn’t. I had gotten so deep in the river and it was so violent, with the storm fresh in the air I would so dearly wish was coursing through my blood that, in that moment, there was an immense wall of water in between me and that world full of air, sweet, joyous air, never had you been so joyous to me. That thick, cursed wall of water that kept me from what I really needed, and for a moment I forgot where I was and even why I was there. I knew that there was no hope left, that I could never make it up towards the world where everything was fresh and new and full of everything that I truly needed. Like her lips, like her voice and the curves of her hips and that warmth, sweet lover, sweet little ghost, and that’s when I saw her.

There she was, and her mission was made. There she was, floating in the blue of her oblivion, her white dress all around her like one white, subtle lily. Her eyes where closed and bubbles emerged from those lips, lips I’ll never taste, body I’ll never hold again. She was dead now, but was I? I had no strength left in me to swim, my muscles, without oxygen, where as worthless as the words she had uttered to the wind, and my bones felt like shattered glass. She was dead, so I should be too.

I started closing my eyes, looking up above into the light that emerged from the edges of the surface. My eyelids felt heavy in their sockets, and it was beautiful, it really was, to not feel time, to not know where, or when, or how. To forget. To forget curves and pinks and skin, so blurred now in my memory, buried under a wall of water, water that let in light, the light I was seeing, the light that evolved me in its kind mercy. I saw, for a second, blackened, soulless figures dip into the water, along with another one, swimming towards me, towards me in their beautiful light, like angels of death, happy life was mine to be received by angels, and they got so close that I could see their faces, faces so ordinary as I let their hands take me to the seventh heaven…

I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I felt the air around me, but I couldn't breathe it or taste it, it was not mine to taste it anymore. But I was actually happy, for at last, at least I got to be in my world, the world where I belonged, before I left, at least the angels received me, and at least I was happy. And, through my soaked eyelids, I saw her, yet again. But she was not pale anymore.

She was very much alive. Her hair, that starless mass that was in between my fingers for so many nights. That skin, the color of minerals, of sand. I know that face, I know you. Her eyes weren't cold anymore, but they where filled, bricked with tears, they screamed at me with hurt, as she pressed my hands towards my cheeks, and her face was wrung out in infinite sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. How many times have I touched those cheeks, felt the pulse and vivacity of her skin, danced my fingers to the strings of her body and then looked into the wells of her soul, heard the tiredness of her felicitous heart. How many times must I, how many times, and I saw those pink lips, pink like cheeks after making love, cheeks pink as coated roses, yet again speak, speak endless, unintelligible words, but I knew what she was saying, I heard her say it in my wall of water, in my oblivion, and I closed my eyes, now genuinely happy, that I got to see her, that I really have kissed those lips, that that hair was once around my fingers, that soul once loved me before turning its back towards me, in my madness, in my despair, with no way out, sweet little ghost, ghost of my memory. Ghost, ghost haunting the rooms of my being without second thoughts, forever impaled in me and in my flesh, her scratches and kisses fresh on my skin, her gasps and delights and songs echoing in my ears, ghost, sweet, beautiful, sweet ghost, that sent me to my grave. 

I was there when I saw her pass away. It was very peaceful, very dreamy. Very much like a dream. She had silk scarf around her head; she was always one for looking elegant, even though she barely had the energy to do so. Her eyes could not see anymore, but they were still the sea green that I remembered, the sea green I loved. She could hear me though; I saw the tiniest fraction of a smile, like the smile of a newborn, upon her lips, all that she could really do. I sat there, my hands interlaced in hers, just, enjoying her. Even though she was so close to death, she was still alive, and she was still mine and the world’s. Her thin chest still rose with every slow breath. Her eyes were still open, though she could only make out shadows and a few colors. But it was her fingers, see? Her beautiful, beautiful fingers, pale and small, smooth as china, that still had an ounce of courage left, an inch of strength left in them to squeeze my hand. Those hands that rode bikes, mounted horses, drew deliciously, turned the pages of piano sheet music and held children. Those hands that put the golden circlet that was on my ring finger, 20 years ago. I swear, her eyes were brighter than any words could say, not even the boldest poet or the loneliest playwright could paint out that shade of velvety ivory green, with blue specks in its peaks, and flecks of silver and sky intertwined in it, the light fell in just right, to make out the happiness in her soul, the bravery in her spirit, powers of her body. But most of all, the love in her heart. No one, not even life, could take that away from me. Though countless times I have tried to reproduce the shades and the colors of her eyes that day, I just could not. Musical notes couldn’t do much either. It was otherworldly. Too good for this world. The sparks, the shimmer, the shine, oh, how I would miss them.

I sat there in silence; she was too weak to speak. I had brought her favorite things; her grandmother’s necklace from when she was about her age, the age “when a young woman should be married”, made out of gold and diamonds with little strings of silver; her favorite dress, white as clouds with summer roses sketched in them. She looked so divine in it, and it always looked so fresh on her, she truly looked like a spring flower drained in morning rain, starting to open its petals out into the sun. The sun, the sun before all this, somehow it used to be so warm. Now every time I leave the sanctuary it seems to chilly out, how could this be? Please explain it to me. Why, why when she was with my son in her arms that day of his first birthday, when she had this exact same dress, and her hair was let down in waves that thickened all the way towards her waist, as if reaching for the earth, and with rubies on her ears, did the sun seem so unreasonably perfect, not too hot and not too clouded? She was a vision. And that smile, it made it all the better, it glowed, it shone, it danced teasingly around you and made your head go spinning. Her eyes smiled, her body smiled, the whole world smiled.

I brought her favorite books; The Hobbit, She, and Bliss, In a German Pension, the Doves Nest, Hamlet, A Winter’s Tale, Pride and Prejudice, collections by Virginia Woolf. And of course Homer and Aristotle, The Barchester Chronicles, Gulliver’s Travels, David Copperfield, and her dose of Shakespeare, William Blade, and Dante! This was just a few of them; I brought what I could obviously carry. Good heavens, she always loved to read, she would spend entire afternoons sitting in her suspended chair, immersed in a book, underneath the lush greens of our trees. There was a funny way that she would move around her mouth when she was puzzled at something, and she always had tears in her eyes when a character she loved dearly died during the tale. Lord, was I cruel! I would laugh at her playfully, though sometimes she took it as an offense. There was something funny, the way that she would get attached to the characters, talk to you in such vivid detail about them that it seemed you knew them. There was something funny? She was funny. That’s why I love her so much. She brought colors in my life that I never had known they existed, that most likely have never been imagined. I loved every second of it. I loved every second of her.

And I brought her family photo book, the thing that she held up above anything in the Universe, with pictures going as far back as her Great grandmother. She would linger at the photos of her grandmother; that one had been a blow to her. You could never, ever see a pair closer together; she loved her Gran to this very day. Ever since she was a teenager, she would comb the long silver hairs of her Granny’s mane, and braid them ever so neatly; and when Old Mrs. Smith could no longer walk or talk or eat by herself, there she was, the girl of my life, beside her Grandmother until the day when she died.

Some part of her heart went along with her Gran. I know it. I could feel it in the way she touched me, in the way she assured me that she would be alright, or how she would just stare at our tulips for long ages of time, saying how they reminded her of her Grandmother’s garden.

I had thought it so peculiar, those strange little gestures and acts-they always seemed the only part of her that was allowed of true expression. She had never cried in front of me, or told me how she grieved. I had never known how to grieve, until this had happened. What would life be now? How I wondered, infinitely wondered how, would she be ever more beautiful? Would we have had another child? Would she have written a book, would we have-

“Dear” said she, “would you open up the window for me?”

I got up without hesitation; something inside me was desperate, something in my chest, that feeling that makes your heart seem like a cave and destroys your stomach to bits. The white linen curtains, soft as daisies, were cleared out of view. It was mid afternoon, and the sun was weary, tired, expired, just like the shades of greens on the trees, or the strained look on the petunias; motor engines were heard from afar, and the sky was a dangerously clear blue, with a crisp moon edging out of the peaks, trying to fit in. She seemed to mock him, for some reason, the only beacon of fresh in such a land worn down to the core. And in the horizon was the sea, the lovely edging sea, but even it seemed tired, far too old for these despaired and troubled times, yet moving around like a young girl, trying to hold on to precious minutes before the end of a ball. The last beams of sun played with it endlessly, giving diamonds and stealing them away yet again on the water’s surface. In the streets I could see beautiful orange trees, bright as colored stars among the ruckus of our cement stone, slender and willowy like a woman’s figure. On those same streets we used to munch on Mrs. Knight’s famous scones, and would drink green tea on cafés, and go endless private balls where everything was bright and glowing and full of light, oh how I miss those days! How I miss them so, those summer months, soaking myself wet in lakes, walking around town and drifting through the depths of the ocean line on my father’s sailboat, with her clinging onto my arms, wind in her hairs and the sea in her mouth. That warm mouth, those warm eyes, and her pink cheeks-

Her smile, and her funniness, and slenderness, and her fire and warmth, the arms of a lover, the eyes of a singer, the heart of a cave of troves, and I got lost in it, and I would never find my way back, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there forever, among her riches, there with her forever.

“I love you Michael. Don’t ever forget it.”

I clung to her hand when she died. She was very peaceful, very pale, like a lotus, like an aloe, like the moon. It was the eves of twilight when she died, with God’s jewels framed on the horizon, an absolutely breathtaking sight, as if all the world was saying their last goodbyes before she went away. All the weariness of the afternoon was washed away with the evening tide, the moon now waxing in her might, the stars aligning themselves in position, getting ready to look into restaurants full of pretty people and candle light, and to hear lonely guitars and romantic voices, and every window was alight like tiny lanterns, where couples would fight and kiss, children would laugh and dream, old marriages would eat and sleep side by side to the sound of waves.

She took a great breath, serene, and I took one more look on that beloved face, bathed in the glow of the late sun; those seas of eyes and that sun of a smile. The love of my life, the mother of my child, my portal to happiness, the key to my joy. The love, the mother, the portal and the key that would go away forever.

There was no light turned on. I didn’t bother to light any.

Don’t go.

Please, don’t. Stay, dear, won’t you stay, stay?-

“I love you Michael.”

I was there when I saw her pass away.