She lies in a room upstairs, swathed in a pale shawl of spring green, waiting to be awakened. Only now even I cannot wake her.
I sit in the hush of this empty house (the children are all grown up, and we've been alone all these years), and think of the many little things I never thought I cared for:
Her penchant for pink, her ginger and carrot cake, the way she laughed with anticipation each Christmas morning; the sounds she made in the early hours of the day. I've come to realize that I discovered her only after our little ones grew up and out of our hearts. There had never been time for the two of us and suddenly, we were alone again. I remember that first evening, and how we sat icily before the fire, teary-eyed and suddenly so lonely. I reached for her hand and she gave it to me thoughtlessly, carelessly; still thinking of the children. I remember her fingers, and how cold they had been... and yet, with time, how I had been able to warm them.
Soon laughter and mischief returned; my old Anne was by my side once more. Comrade and beloved, she skipped beside me in the purple twilights and tickled me with her laughter in the mornings. Out came her books and her papers, and she was soon writing again. I would watch her in the evenings, enjoying the solemn way she bent over her work, the way she bit her pen and frowned out the frost-painted window.
Now all of that has passed. She will no longer keep me up at night with her chatter and her determination to finish out a chapter. I will never again hear her voice as it slips through streams of ancient poetry. She is still, and silent, and no longer mine.
My Anne once spoke of castles and diamond sunbursts… I never was able to give them to her. And yet, as I sit here within this cloaked darkness, I realize something:
It was she who built my castle; it was Anne who became my diamond sunburst. And suddenly, the world seems hollow, frail and empty.
A lone bird twitters from the branches of a tree she once loved, and Oh! Perhaps I am not so alone.