tempest

I have a story that always starts the same. The words form in my mind,
always in exact order, day after day. “I once loved the most beautiful
woman.” This is how the story begins and ends. As I know in my heart
it shall always end. Each day I stand on a cliff not knowing which way
the winds shall course. Shall they blow me from the edge into an abyss
of violent waves crashing on the jagged edges of the hungry immovable
rocks calling to me from below. Or shall their grip pull me back to
the flowered fields and warm glow of the sunlit gardens of my
cherished dreams. For I know that someday the story will find its
course, and I wait like a shivering child, filled with hope and dread
for the tides of time to run their course. And me, a lone sailor in a
tiny boat tossed about by a violent tempest awaiting on an ever silent
God to calm the seas. Still, the story has only its two possible
endings: I shall either be telling it to my children yet unborn with
you by my side my love, as I see their faces aglow in anticipation of
the most wonderful tale of how we and they found our destiny. Or I
shall be sitting someday in a very dim bar, leaning my leathery elbows
on an ancient and tattered railing, rubbed smooth from countless years
of anguish, telling a tale to another man broken by his own fate, and
forming my parched lips to speak the words, “I want to tell you the
saddest, yet the most beautiful story you’ve ever heard.” Still, the
fact remains, I once loved the most beautiful woman. And always shall.