Ephemeral

A short story of grief, life, loss, and all things.

He stood by the corner and waited, ploughing his foot back and forth against the pavement. His ears strained at the song it produced, at the sound and noises and sensations. The lullaby escaping from the mouth of his sock. 

Out to the left stretched Darra, the white-painted tops of the old buildings quivering against the rising heat, paint peeling under the callous hands of humidity. All the lights were on now, all but one. All but one with darkness still crouching within its halls. Its warm halls. The halls he knew so well. 

The door was open slightly, and he could see men and women and dogs with dirt reaching for their eyelids sitting by the side.  Sitting and waiting. Sitting and smelling. Noses pressed against the windowsill, nostrils searching hard to grasp one flittering tendril of what lurked within. The peeling flesh of lamb bathing in its juices. Peaches with splitting flesh growing fat with syrup. The nostalgic hum of an oven. Chicken skin tanning and cracking and wilting and growing firm. Growing firm and golden. 

He waited awhile, then wiped his brow and walked the few feet over to the source of the smell. He pushed his way through the bodies and arms and legs, pushed hard and heavy until he reached the front. He wiped his hands against pants and looked up when saw a woman. A small and exquisite creature with a seraphic face and pale curly hair that was the living image of his own, his only, his dead and vanished darling. He watched her place trays of spiced lentils atop the benches, watched her slit the skin of potatoes and fill their gaping wounds with mounds of butter. He heard the tearing crunch of apricots while ridded of their fuzzy down. Cuts of bacon growing tender beneath cascading sheaths of oil. Sugar releasing itself deep into the embrace of oats, warm oats, oats that discharged a wistful perfume. 

He remembered his darling then. He remembered waking to her tremendous smile. Light, never dark, the smell of burning porridge on the stove. Toast black and bruised but healed with jam. Healed by her. 

It was light now, and a thin drizzle was coming down in front of him. He removed his socks, tightened his buttons, stared at the woman. The woman who was now approaching the door. The woman that gave him a nod of recognition, a nod of sympathy, as she allowed us to pass. Allowed all of us to pass. 

He closed his eyes before he entered. So warm. So much warmth. 

And he continued, eyes closed, until he approached the centre of the room. Eyes opening, heart expanding, eyes watering. Food. So much food. 

Pancakes with swollen bellies. Pitchers laden with buttered gravy. Cuts of steak embellished with rosemary and succulent centres. 

So much warmth. 

He stood in front of the metallic trays and drunk warm tomato juice while he studied everything inside. Hot air blew out at him. He looked at the chicken breasts extravasating rounds of lemon, the carrots polished with honey beating down upon his hapless soul, the seemingly alive, captivating exhibits. 

It was then that he saw. Saw the madeleines. The orange shells glistening, so bright that they flared. Pockets of sweetness heaved from a long-distant past where nothing subsists, still here after everything is scattered and broken, taste and smell alone. More fragile but more enduring, more insubstantial but more faithful, poised here like spirits, remembering, waiting, watching. Bearing in the impalpable drop of their essence the ephemeral structure of recollection. 

He felt the taught embrace of their tepid skin, reached for the smallest one, the one failing to prevail amongst the others. It melted into his palm, growing warmer, comforted by the heat of his blood. He placed the madeleine against his heart, the domain of consciousness. Its flesh growing warmer, united with the languorous pounding emanating from his chest. 

So warm now. So warm. 

His thumb pierced its centre, a glimpse of desolate abandon. Resistance, so much resistance, the skin that had for so long remained constant, a silent watcher, forcibly removed.

Why was it her?  Why not all these people who sail through life free as birds?

He continued, frowning to himself. Dismantling the full cocoons lying complacent and ignorant within, hidden beneath the rigid exterior. Squeezed all of the voluptuous mounds into a ball and, in the act, squeezed out of them a mouthful of verbal juice, at once astringent and heady,  acetous and tart. Elongated his tongue, prepared. 

It was easier said than done. 

The acrid sap of the madeleine stung the cuts lining his inner cheeks. His lips began to move at last. 

My darling, he whispered. 

And with the single fragment of its essence he admitted to the ruins of all the rest. Eyes growing heavy, legs buckling under the weight reminiscence. 

For his darling had finally returned.