Beneath the Locust Tree

"And the stars will show
where the waters flow
where the gardens grow
that's where I'll meet you"
- "Stars", Roxette



       The stale lichen mars every inch of the once spotless marble, and I must smile wryly at the aptness of such blemish. The insensate stone reflects what you have - but oh Heaven, no! I had not meant to torment myself with the thought of your fragile flesh being consumed by its own corporeality! I had meant only to dip in to the now-familiar waters of nostalgic melancholy, reflecting on what we have become, after what we once were. I cannot bear to think of anything more mortal than that.
       But once such thoughts have begun, they shall have all the time in this wretched world to meander and linger, before returning to my control. All that my mind's merciless eye will show me is that which lies beneath my suddenly unsteady feet: for every of the myriad stones, a blighted corpse lies chewed by maggots, and for every of those foul bodies, another two lie beside it, whose stones have been lost to the ages. I feel no pity for them, only disgust at their existence, and horror (and an endless depth of sorrow) that you have become just as they. The long locks of your burnished hair, your skin of subtle porcelains, your entrancing beryl eyes, which seemed hardly to dim at all, though all else of our selves did... The rosewood and ebony in which you were so tenderly ensconced have surely long melted into the soil around you, and your exquisite fingers must now only caress that lowest of earth, the mingled remains of plants and persons deceased, all decay and putrid refuse. Oh my belovèd! That you should have come to this! That we should all have come to this, to face such an abhorrent destiny. For what other future have we now? We have no hope of rising again. Our bodies shall only sink, lower and lower, forgotten and covered over, until we have finally sunk into the Hell we set out courses towards.
       Every weathered stone of this place bears the simulacrum and bittersweet despondency of a dark, steady rain - a rain which pushes back the efforts of this evening summer sun, as its caressing rays seek to soften sorrows, draping in golden silk these markers of wasted flesh.
       Though there is light, your name can no longer be read, for the tarnish of long years covers it in perpetual shrouds, stealing your very existence from all but memory. I once did what I could to wash clean the surface, to keep at least your name here in this world with me... but my strength has only waned, and the smallest of efforts is sufficient, at times, to weary me. And I do not need to read the stone, I have read it for centuries, in both sleep and in waking. The fleeting years can keep no tally of the countless souls who pass so briefly through them, but your name will always be held by me. Your name, your voice wrapping words in a burgundy velvet, your incarnadine lips, your skin with its taste of honeysuckle and jasmine...
       Such vague remembrances! A man's life is recalled by a list of his finest accomplishments - but what does that say of the man's self? Do you know a man, if you know his name and that he built such a house, upon such a hill? Do you know a man, if you know that he was a skilled and affluent doctor? What does that say of his manner, of his cares, of his joys? What does it say of how he treated his lovers, of his preferred entertainment of an evening, of the jests he shared or did not share? These supposed accomplishments tell nothing, and I refuse to reduce all that you were and yet are to a laundry list of facts. It is the nuances of your soul that I will cling to, and the ways in which it revealed itself, through your speech and motion and concerns.
       My darling, you know that I have kept the garden you so loved. I have little skill, but I walk there still, and tend what I am able. Such lovely times that place has known! The parties which lingered through the deep summer nights, strings of tiny lanterns tangling with the stars in the trellises overhead, voices jesting lightly by the fountains, or murmuring discreetly by the still pools. The fragrance of each flower merging with that of its neighbor, in trysts hidden by the night's deep draperies...
       I cannot bring the roses to bloom again. I have tried with all the little art left me, but I have neither the vigor nor the necessary finesse. The dew coats them flirtatiously as any other flora, but their silken petals remain hidden in memory, the leaves grown dingy in long regret. I have kept back the frost, but the decay, I have not the strength to turn away. The roses I yearn for, those which looked so lovely against your skin, which coated your lips, which caressed as sensuously as your delicate fingertips, the roses will not return, though I do all...

       A breeze flits by, rustling the leaves of the locust tree we raised behind you, so many years ago... or is this a descendent of that tree? It has been so very long, and the years tangle in the fog of remembrance. I have kept the sweet peas and forget-me-nots here, for though the blooms are not uncommon their sentiment is mine, and they do rather well here. I bring you amaranth, as I cannot help but do, it clings so to us all as an inevitable embodiment of our selves. (Though I bring it also in promise - that the memory of you shall be as undying as we.) And I bring you what roses I may, my darling, though they are not of my own raising, for which I must ask your eternal pardon, I wish--- oh how I wish that it were not so! But you shall never be forgotten, my dear one, though your body at last rests and perhaps has found a deep, profound slumber after so long being troubled, thoughts of you shall remain with us always, our number will never truly diminish. And I have seen the blue violets which spring up around you, and I weep at the impossible kindness to your answer to my perennial pilgrimages:
       The flowers of faithfulness.
       The simple form and plain color of the delicate things touch me in ways the most sumptuous of blossoms have ever failed to do. Their faint scent seems to remain with me, and both keeps me from despair and yet throws me deeper into it, for it soothes me and it torments me, with beautiful and painful anamnesis, and oh, darling, I should almost have wished that we had never fallen, so that such a horrible thing should not have happened to you! I can hardly bring myself to think of such but so I do, this is what you reduce me to, what the pain of your absence and all that it signifies, causes me to be. I am caught in the briars of emotion and cannot break free, and my struggles only tear me deeper. A Name I cannot utter hovers at my lips, and I know if I could speak it I should be soothed - that you should bring me to this! Oh what have we become, what has happened to what we were to be? We had such plans, what did we need but our own strengths and desires? And now all has faded and peace will not reach us, every moment are our souls tormented, and every distraction wears thin sooner and sooner... oh my lost one, what am I to do? What has become of you, you have become all that we fear most and yet you will not tell us of it, you will not speak my now-forgotten name, you will not help me and I am a fool to ask but I cannot help do so...

       Oh, what meaning has Time to those for whom it does not end? I do not know how you found a reprieve from this world, my dear lover, I saw the terrible price you paid for it, but I am glad you are at last away, to rest for a time. You are yet my hope, though you remain my terror. I will keep the garden for you, darling, and you will keep my thoughts. I will scatter rich roses over you, and kiss the ground you have now become, and I will walk with you beneath me.