Roaming in Pink

Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.

“Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy, 1875-1877

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Dear Alex,

When you have nothing left in you to lift an eyelid, will you leave something behind for another to be uplifted?

Reader, scholar, jester, guard, nomad, weeper, away you flutter. Would they - who know you, hear and smell you rustling through the corridors and phone lines - see you in their wandering between water and land, sky and wall?

Yesterday I woke up just before noon, much later than usual. The mid-day light split through the window blinds, a scatter of Spring on my face.

Come. Let out. Outlet of love. Out with my dog I walked to gather beauty in roaming. Tulips, slips of scarlet, wings on webs, velvet bark, shapes and shades spreading closer home. I carried sunshine back into my living room.

On the sofa I sat with a book of old maps and kingdoms, bruises and wind. I felt light as dandruff, fastened to words alive, a live ring of coals on neck, forgetting for once in a long time the bills and downhills of mid-aged mimes.

Nothing can be more brilliantly telling of a person in faded color and scent than the moment she has lost her story in yours, the snap of his closing lips to tell in silence, the ruin of envy and fear in burst of buds, our halt in breath in seconds in awe in pink.

Yours, Kate