Tears of Memories

I stand tentatively upon the wobble board of my mind – balancing – anticipating the pleasure of recalling memories – memories from a lifetime ago.

I’m swamped with the painful realisation that time has passed.

That the sabre of time - has calved a bitter score.

I cautiously placed my foot between the cracks,

Cracks like bottomless craters in the once smooth driver way  leading to the house, this palace within my mind.

I reach for the gate marked with a crown of golden rust.

It creeks at my touch.

I move with nervous caution

The doorway dressed in fine spider web embellished gown welcomes me.

She was at the door standing precariously on legs twisted by the ravages of the cruel invader – an invader who had tried to squeeze the very air from her tiny body more than 70 years prior leaving scares so deep but scares she has never let define her in childhood or now

She stepped back inviting me to enter.

Her joy for company was written in her smile as we both wobbled in our own style to sit at the old, worn table of familiarity

A table stained with decades of rings from the coffee, tea and conversation now looks sad as a single coffee cup alone paints a picture of true solitude.

I felt an eternal sadness as I noted the lino loose no longer firmly embracing the wooded floor beneath it

The table old, wearing the marks of a lifetime of conversations dressed by the presence of but one cup paints the true picture of solitude.

Words spoken, yet, their interpretation is of little relevance.

The bond was not the verbal interchange but simply in being.

I sit the sound of the boiling kettle.

Coffee and cold milk trickling into a glass, my glass as we drift back through the decades and the echoes of the many childhoods past bring both tears of joy and loss.

But then as the cycle of time once more challenges the reality of the day our memories go back full spin and the world we know returns. The stories from years pass once more become fragile memories, tears forever in our hearts.