I putting a story up that I wrote in 2011. I'm not sure anyone has ever seen it really. It has flaws, I'm sure.
My Heart Keeps
Remembering
Tosha leaned forward in the darkness of her room. Her emptiness hung there like a butchered
duck in the window of the shop in Chinatown where she and Bruce had stopped to
gawk at its ugliness. He picked San
Francisco for their honeymoon. She
thought it simple and too close to home, but he had dazzled her with hidden
sweetness and a gentle understanding to the things that made her purr. Why was Tosha thinking of that duck in the
dirty window and the sounds of languages she would never understand? She could
not fathom why, not at this moment.
Now, she was in Oregon, alone, submerged in Portland with
its lushness, green haze and one way streets that drove her crazy before Bruce
showed her how to navigate her frustration.
The city opened up to her then with Bruce by her side dressed in a smile
that was never less than genuine. Tosha
considered herself to be mostly unlucky in this world until he found her that
day on the walking bridge in the Japanese Gardens.
It was spring and Bruce saw her under the blossoms of the
cherry tree, chestnut hair framing a solemn mouth, imagining what it would be
like listening to her heart beneath his ear.
Her eyes were down cast, she was watching the koi do their intimate
dance beneath lotus pads. Bruce walked
slowly, quietly and came onto the bridge.
Tosha hadn’t heard his shoes scuffle the wood mesmerized by the world
inside the world she was living. Bruce
stood next to her with his pinky touching hers.
Tosha felt a sudden warmth and looked at this man’s hand
sharing a space that was reserved for lovers.
He was a stranger and yet, she had no objection in the silence between
them. She couldn’t bring herself to
behold him gazing back to the water, but the koi disbanded, forcing her to lift
her eyes to his. He stared at her with
such conviction. She knew there would always be something between them.
Alone in this night, with Bruce underground only three
days, Tosha couldn’t find reality to be any sort of comfort. She slid from the bed looking out the
window. The moon was a wafer shy of full
and mocking her. Tosha found her arms
sliding into her coat, her feet into the loafers she wore for gardening and her
keys in her hand. The doorknob felt cold
in her palm as she turned it. She drove
her old Volvo through town and when she finally stopped the engine quiet, she
was in front of the Japanese Gardens.
She stood at the gates that were closed like her newly
damaged heart. Tosha shook their
solidity until the bars rattled like a ghost story. She remembered they had found a hole in the
fence a long time ago and had snuck in to make love on the sumptuous
grass. Tosha ran with arms pumping and
legs burning against the chill of the moon-filled night. She prayed it was still there, that one flaw
in the park, that one chance to get him back.
Breathless, Tosha stopped at the torn seam in the
fence. She removed her coat to fit
through but the years found her less agile than she once was as her skin scraped
raw across the rough edges of the chain link.
She didn’t care about anything right now except the bridge where she
first understood the meaning of existence.
Her legs carried her in the sparse light of the moon until she saw it in
the distance. Her breathing heavy still;
her heart bursting through her ribs with expectation.
She removed her shoes feeling the faded, worn wood
beneath her feet. It was strangely
powerful as one foot fell in front of the other until reaching the apex of the
bridge underneath the cherry tree. Tosha
couldn’t see the koi in the dark, but she stared into the water
regardless. A gale swept across the
gardens livening her skin with goose bumps and an overwhelming feeling that
Bruce was here with her.
Tosha felt that warmth again and she couldn’t look for
fear that she were dreaming. She couldn’t
risk the disappointment in discovering her insanity, because she felt that
warmth like an undeniable truth. Her head turned without opening her eyes at
first. She coaxed them slowly and beside
her was the pale, translucent outline of her dear Bruce just as young as the
day she had met him—so handsome, his smile a thing to start a war over. Tosha leaned into this light, putting her
lips to his, legs trembling beneath her and the world dropping from her
vision. She still loved him. She still wanted him always beside her in
silent confidence as the keeper of her sweet tenderness which no one else could
see.
The wind came again, harder this time, shaking the cherry
tree with unmitigated violence, its bare branches like nails against a
chalkboard, and he was gone. Tosha froze
in her disbelief, in her unwillingness to let go, in her cold and selfish
grief, remembering how a smile changed everything that ever was or will be.
Aleathia Drehmer 2011
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