A Postcard From the Volcano: Backstory

 A Postcard From the Volcano: Backstory

 The wind whispers silent remedies through the night as I recline in my old oak rocker. The years have possessed my youthful color and crept into the crevices of my face. I watch the moon and wait for the hour it claims my withered soul. She's gone now, and this large, once bright mansion, has died along with her. I have kept the house the way she left it, the rusty kettle on the stove, the flowers she picked, flaking and black on the counter top. I subsist without her. I have seen the grass grow and fade, felt the sun burn hotter and move farther away, but the moon never fails to gloat upon me with a gleaming eye. By now, dust and cob webs have organized themselves atop things that used to hold importance to me. When I could still hold her hand, before she took all the color with her, children giggled boisterously as they passed by on their way to school. Now I listen to them whisper tales of the "haunted house with the white shudders", as they cross to the other side of the street. In time, these children will discover their own stories, but never know how similar theirs is to the one hiding within these walls.
 She is but bones now, marked by a thick, earthy stone, reduced to no more than a name, a beginning and an end date; they will never know how we felt in between.

She and I were so lost in love. We raced through life like it we owed it nothing, and took as we pleased; ignorance was our breath and passion was our bread. I didn't own much, because the only thing I needed was her hand in mine, likewise, that was all she needed. I remember vividly, the day she turned 17, the brilliant light that danced on her freckles and bounced off her amber hair, as she cooed her love in my ear. We shared a sleeping bag in the basement of an old run down motel, until her belly grew big. We quickly opened our eyes to new necessities, but never left our passion behind. We moved into a large, bright mansion inherited from my grandfather. We watched our children play in the tree tops, and graduate from school, all the while I held her hand. Her hair became silver, and her fair skin became fragile and spotted, but she was more beautiful than she had ever been to me. When the darkness bloomed below her eyes, and her cough colored her handkerchief foreign shades of red, I knew life was coming to claim what we owed it from so long ago. I held her hand until the hour it turned to ice.
 Decades have passed since our souls have separated, although it wasn't more than a few months after she had gone that I had left my wrinkled worldly body. But, she has departed without me, so I wait her for her to come back, to remember. I wait for her in the mansion where our love blossomed, where I can still feel her. I wait between the walls and in the creeks of the floor boards. I move with the paintings in the kitchen and rock with the shutters late at night. I am in the attic, reclining beneath the moonlight, in my old oak rocker, waiting to hold her hand once more.