Mayfly

(Prompt: Some lovely music by Vienna Teng - thanks to Seras)

I made my decision, and it lingers with me. I’m never lonely, and I have no regrets. A lesser heart and on lesser nights, the ache can reach down like the winter, but in the mirror glass and in lights of eyes, I find my vision to go onward. I can see everything now, on everyone. What I what to see most, though, is what I’ll never see again. For having seen it, though, I’ll pay this price. I’ll live on, open and aching, with a memory of a mayfly in the middle of winter.

She gave me every warning, and I drank them up like something light and sweet. There was a thrill to the dying moments, something sensual and hungry. Claws on the blackboard, fingernails against the skin. When I kissed her, the world went away, because the clicking of the clock’s gears had to be pushed aside. It was vital. It was here. It was now. Now and never again, and so it was everything. And then it became everything else.

I see her in the sliding lights on the bus stops at three in the morning. I see her smile, but not exactly, whenever a young girl smiles. I see the faint toss of her hair, imitated by a thousand actresses, but never quite correctly. They don’t have her walk. They can’t match her voice. They don’t carry her urgent peace – a calm borne of true and simple joy. She’d made her choice. She chose me. She was content.

So I will be content. With my streetlight mirages. With my brushstroke touches on crowded streets. With the actresses wearing her scent. She’s gone, but she’ll never leave me. My mayfly heart is immortal and endless in my point of view. Thank you.

Come back.