A MEMORY OF LOVE

Alexander Weinstein

           

Love is the most powerful feeling man has ever known. Unlike hate which can be assuaged with the passage of time, love endures forever. Each one of us remembers our first love, and even away from them, one always longs to embrace that soothing feeling of comfort and absolute acceptance. To love another is to open oneself like a chest of drawers, and allow the other not a peek, but a chance to view the full inventory of what lies within. In turn we ask our partner to give the same. They must open the pages of the diary written within the recesses of their heart, for only then can one begin to build the trust that love cannot live without.

It was that ineffable tug that never allowed her memory to fade. He knew that one day, when he grew older, and left the requirements of youth behind, he would come for her. Fate, destiny, or God, he couldn’t understand it, why her, what did she posses that allowed her memory to dance on his eyelids before he drifted off to sleep? Could it be that if a love refuses to die one is simply obsessed, or just following a heavenly script? Still, he tried to fight it and make a life away from her, but like the inexorable light of a Nordic winter, no matter where he ran, her shadow was only a few paces behind. She didn’t haunt him, no; her memory quietly strode nearby, and without even a whisper it secretly watched over him.

Across a great distance she too longed to reunite. To see him, to hear those sweet nothings only he would tell her, and to feel his arms gently wrap around her. She lay awake thinking of him, wishing he too felt this way, for she wanted so desperately to know. Within her, she somehow knew their love still lived, and he would come back for her as he promised. She dreamed of the shimmering white gown she would wear for him on their wedding day, the tears that would gently bubble from the eyes of her father, and how her heart would pound as she approached the alter. That night, before she went to sleep, she could swear she heard his voice, for when you stumble upon the purest of love; they never really leave your side.