Story-A-Day #124: In A Fog

IN A FOG

Do you remember this place where we used to meet? It was always our secret, a quiet escape from the overwhelming. It was our retreat from reality.

Sometimes we would come here together, walking along the quiet paths until we didn’t want to walk any further. Sometimes we would arrive separately, drawn together as always by our need to find comfort in a shared embrace. On those unplanned days, I grew to understand just how much you meant to me, how much a part of my life you had become.

We would settle down and watch the world with an unfocussed intensity. There was a simple beauty to the time we shared, a glorious aloofness that somehow managed to be razor sharp.

As I sit here today, engulfed in a fog, I wish that you were still here with me, a partner in silence to stave off the cool chill. With a warm smile, you would dispel the bleakness of the mournful day, evaporating the doubts and fears and remorse that slowly seep in from the corners of my reality.

I am happy, though. Please don’t think I am not. I have done well for myself, made a name that merits the one I began with; the one I had back then. I have worked hard, and lived hard, and I have grown. We are older now, wiser and more responsible. I miss the quiet simplicity of retreat. Life isn’t like it used to be, for either one of us I am sure.

I sometimes think that you are here. It’s not my imagination though; it is bigger and broader than that. It is more real. On a day like today, I can almost see you lurking in the fog, your slender form a wisp that mingles with its surroundings. There is a subtle radiance in the gloom that surrounds you, a glow that threatens to burst into a radiant heat and that burns a hole through the present, and into the past.

I can feel you in the grass beneath me, and hear your voice whispering gently through the short green blades. I can smell you in the flowers, an earthy nostalgic aroma that only furthers the illusion that you are here.

We are inextricably linked to this place, one with the other. There is no escape, no will to escape. This is the place where we used to be and the place we will be forever. It is simple and magic and unlike any other.

Not many places like this exist, places so entwined in moments shared that they no longer exist without them. This was our place, and remains so.

I sit here in a fog with you by my side. It doesn’t matter how much space or time separates us because in this fog, we remain one. There is no place more beautiful or sacred in the world.