Just Prologue

Milkweed flower | tinycamper.files.wordpress.com

When first I knew her, I thought her an amusing scrap of girl, silly and a bit grubby from her morning spent in the gardens. When not pottering about out of doors, she seemed always to be reading some poetic nonsense or other and loved nothing more than pose the most disturbing questions. Still, I liked her even then and, I think, she admired me. But her father took notice and pronounced me unsuitable, effectively pruning our young-friend-ship before it could grow into anything. I soon forgot about you. Or so I convinced myself.

Years passed, and when I saw her again she was altogether changed. Not only her situation, which had changed from privileged to piteous, but also her very substance. At least it seemed so to me.

Others would look at her with much different eyes. They would see, perhaps, a fallen woman at the deepest point of humiliation. A woman to be flicked off one’s sleeve like a disguisting worm. Or an insect to be tormented. Cruel, overgrown schoolchildren that many are, they seem to delight in ripping off one wing, then another, watching in morbid glee as she falls helpless to the ground.

To the gentler observer, she is a creature to be scorned at worst, ignored at best, but certainly not one to watch in hopeful anticipation. Day by day to witness her transformation amid the grime and cloying weight of her surroundings, not to wither not shrink, but to unfurl, to become all that is sun and wind and flower and grace.

I, of course, can only watch from a safe distance—safe for us both. For me and for her.

Yes, as I watch her there among the milkweeds, I confess all these thoughts fade away. I think only of her.

How lovely she looks. Not abstractly beautiful, but perfectly fitted to the landscape, etched into a painting of purest golden glow above, and mad, overgrown garden below—gold, green, purple—heaven and earth. And there at the center, her still figure, looking not at me but the distant horizon, where the sun is spilling its first fingers over the milkweed, over her skin, her hijab, her gown.

The light moves toward me and I am stilled, speechless. A sharp barb of waiting fills my chest and I can barely breathe. If I don’t move, the light will touch me, the painting encompass me. If I step away, retreat into the shadows, I will be safe, but I won’t be there to see her when she finally flies away…

Dear God. Please guard my steps. And somehow bless you.


And it was just a dream (again).
Thanks for Julie K.