When The Lady Smiles

Katherine had sensed there was huge hurt surrounding Richard, long before she let his fingers fall across her words, slipping sideways over the braille, and those words spoke to his heart, ten years with her husband, his fingers touching her smile, knowing every degree of curve in her jaw, the exact length of her clavicle indentation, the fall from her shin to her foot, and the sweep of her backbone to that small hollow above her hindside. Emotions that had once sparkled and flashed across their lives were, in the end, torn, frayed by something unseen, and only the bandage of love had given comfort. Richard held her last letter, having run his fingers across the words every day since she had been taken in a glance. At twenty years of age he had reached out his arms to be saved, having felt the dark depth of fear and then, months later, the warm inviting depth of her.

But that was then, and even though things still tugged these long months later, it was time to re-examine his life. There are stark facts to be faced, an entire way of life to think about and he knows mostly that he can do it. He hadn't wanted to fail her, not in any department of his life, even though he knew there would be times when they would be apart, but there is no lie, no deceit strong enough that can cover up what a man really is. In the end love had clobbered him back into the open from a childhood lived in darkness. A blind man found, embittered and then loved, shown beauty as if his eyes saw every color. At twenty he was no longer afraid or bitter, but a free man; a man offered a vision of love, but that was before some scheming trick, waiting in the wings, in a moment of carelessness, wiped out his new found sight and the love he had found.

Richard stood at the graveside, felt the letter in his hand, felt the words slip from the page, becoming nature, falling to nothingness, drifting on the air, asleep in a nest of flames. He saw it all, he saw those words glide away on love's wings, carried aloft, setting sail on a fairytale, only to come together again when the lady smiles.

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