The Lilly’s and the daisy doilies provided visual reminder that some are from an era bygone. her frailty frightened me as I imagined someone so tenuous so fragile would shatter if bumped hard enough or for mercy’s sake had fallen on solid flooring. I wept dry tears as she struggled to unstick her tongue from her mouth to speak, it sent me dashing for a glass of water just so I didn’t have to feel what I was feeling watching her struggle. In the interim, my head began spinning with the big ceiling fan that appears to be changing the barometric pressure in my nasal cavity. I wanted out but in the middle of my absolute horror I saw something that changed my life eternally, True Love.

As we lifted from the armchairs and gathered all the peach things and green bean jars she had shared with us we found the oddest temptation to stay forever. As if pressed back through a mobius pathway in time we heard stories of an America that to our knowledge just no longer existed. It made us pine, longing for something that we deserved and of which we had been unduly deprived. Foster Mae, she said it in the Georgian drawl that made you immediately ponder sunshine, pecans and wide depression style wrap around porches. She had lived, not simply plodded through life looking to smell the roses but lived, with dirt, war, blood, shame and glorious revival of which we could not hear enough. My right foot would not completely wake up and she smiled at me as I half dragged myself across the parlor toward the screen door patio.

She looked on as we walked toward the broad steps whitewashed recently, and remarked on the buckets of peaches sitting on the poor awaiting some manner of Southern Recipe to turn them into Cobbler or some other goodness. We stalled our departure only cause it felt so right to love up on this wonderful example of God’s reflection. It was hard to remove myself from the premises but when I got to the car and looked over at Gina, I had never seen a smile large or bright across that face. Something had changed us that day and I just wanted more. The vehicle lurched forward as my foot suddenly awoke and I found that my heart had changed in its rhythm. As if by some magic I felt as if I had been adjusted down a speed where things moved more slowly and that was alright with me.

When we got back to Reason, not thinking of what we’d gone through we stepped right back into the midst of everything as it was. The rage hit us as neighbors and their upset immediately scoured at us with their darkened hearts and dimly lit mosquito pots heckling us with tongues of fire from the edge of their watchtower. They had not moved or by any measure of memories provision changed at all since last we’d seen them. Same clothes, same dour look, same desire to catalog and report everything that each of us did that never seemed to pass their review. We took our peaches and the marmalade and scurried into the Front hallway, simply to remove the pain of their laser focus upon our shoulder blades. Oddly enough I think I check my jacket to see if there were any burn holes on the back then chuckled as I chided myself. Our house was silent, but an odd silence as if even the crickets and birds feared utterance for fear that they’d be located and swallowed entirely. Something wasn’t right and I walked the rooms to discover just what was out of place, but try as I might nothing presented itself ample focus.

That night we kissed and said our customary exchange of love and both stopped as if equally realizing that our meeting had permanently transformed us and the same old rituals were never going to suffice. So we stopped and held each other tight at first but then just cuddled and as I heard myself begin to drift into quiet slumber she went completely still within my arms. Awaking two stages from my previous venture I reminded myself how fortunate one man could be and as I listened to hear breathing quietly I knew that tomorrow was not going to be like any other day. Our lives had changed that day for the better, as if something had been missing that was suddenly engaged or replaced in the machinery making the product operate in perfect order. I don’t remember falling asleep but when we woke up the morning next we were still entwined in one big pile of arms and legs having held each other all night without moving even a couple inches.

I looked into those dark brown eyes and waited for her to speak because I didn’t want to flinch and be the first to break the perfect silence.