Valentine

February 15, 2016

Greetings from il sogno si avvera,

Cobwebs tinged with dust stretched across piles of scrap wood, pieces of art abandoned and then adopted by the spiders.  The workshop was a calamity.  Filled with projects in various stages of completion; some dangling from the ceiling, others piled in corners, some clamped in place where the wood carver left off working on them.

There were three legged stools and ladderback chairs, elaborately etched boxes, a deacon’s bench, picture frames, toy wagons, bowls, spindles.  Creations destined for life elsewhere, waiting in the purgatory between the idea of them and reality.

He stood at his workbench, the lanterns flickering at either side of him, bathing the wood carver in gold.  Behind him stretched two oval shadows, converging in a greyish heart shape laid out behind him on the floor, stippled in sawdust.

He worked there day after day, month after month, shaping and forming wood into creations sometimes only he would understand at first.  Years poured over him and fell like wood shavings at his feet.

His face was still.  His eyes had stopped seeing what was in front of him, and now he was lost somewhere else, seeing another time.  His hands were resting on the piece he had been sanding, forgotten now on the crowded bench. 

His hands were cracked and calloused, the nails rimmed with the vestiges of dark stain.  In the decades he had worked with oak and cherry and pine he had aged like wood, darkened in marbled colors from where time had left its patina. 

Outside darkness had already absorbed the world around his windows.  He had lost track of the time and worn way another day, sanded it off moment by moment until night was all that was left.

His eyes flickered and he came back to the room, and his lips parted beneath the scruffy white mustache and he took a breath.  He turned his head slightly and glanced up at the old clock that pecked at the silence. 

There was not a day he didn’t think of her, but on this fourteenth day in February, this same day he first lost her, she was branded in every pulse in his chest.  Each time he breathed in he smelled her, every shadow held her possibility, each sound might have been her saying his name. 

He slid his hands from the piece he had been sanding, looking down at its lifeless form where it seemed to mock him, the shape not quite what he hoped.  His faced changed for a moment as he looked closer at his work.  The arms and legs were good, but he needed to spend time on it to make it perfect.  Perhaps tomorrow. 

He turned from the bench and shuffled across the room and then settled on the worn cushions of the settee.  She would be here soon.

He wiped his hands on the apron, both caked with the fine white powder from the sanding cloth, the effort merely trading the dust back and forth.  The room was cold, he had not tended to the fire, and now he felt it in his bones.  He sighed and waited.

In one moment he was alone with only the sound of his breathing and the steady tempo from the clock.  And then she was there.

She sat next to him, lovely, graceful.  Her hair, the color of newly cut cedar, was swept up in that magical way she kept it, wild but contained for now, like so much of who she was.   She was wearing a yellow dress, his favorite.  He did not look directly at her for fear she would not be there.  He watched her smile from the corner of his eyes.

She rested her hand on his and his breath caught and he pressed his lips closed to stifle a sob.

“I am so grateful you are here, but it has been a long, year. I miss you,” he said.  “I am not as strong as I was when you first left, and the time is harder to pass alone.”

“I know.” She said.  “I feel that.  But you know I am with you, don’t you Joseph?”

He smiled at this, felt the laugh in him.  She would call him Joseph to tease him when he was too serious.  Or Little Joe.  It was something she brought from America

He finally felt the courage to look at her and he felt the warmth spread over him. 

They sat and talked, trading whispers back and forth, laughing now, then quiet again.  He told her about the year that had passed, the things he had made, the people who came to the workshop.  The conversation drifted to their shared memories, and he felt lighter just being in those moments again with her.  The night swept by them marked by the metronome on the wall, he didn’t dare look to see how many hours they spent talking.  And then he paused and took a breath;

“I love you more than I knew.  And now that I know I am too poor in words to tell you.” he said, now unable to look at her for a moment.  He sniffed, the tears that had slipped along the creases under his eyes touched the edge of his glasses.  He raised his other hand to swipe the moisture on his cheek.

“Love brings us such delight, doesn’t it?” she said, taking both of his hands in hers.  “But it is not just a gift, it comes with a price.  You shouldn’t be sad at that cost; it is part of what binds us to each other, the joy of being together, such as this, and the ache that we feel when we are apart.  It is each part of the same thing.”

He looked at her again, his mind working, trying to find how to say what he felt, knowing that the morning would be coming and their time would end. He spoke her name and she smiled at him and he felt something in him fill a little more.

“My Joseph,” she said, “I must be going soon, but I am not going to leave you alone.”  She tilted her head and held him with her eyes, the color of deep, rich mahogany.   He started to say “I don’t understand.” but her look told him he would know what she meant, and he trusted this with his very soul.

Now he did not want to look away from her, not ever.  In his mind he saw them sitting there from that moment on, wherever that took them.  The thought gave him peace, and his eyes closed for a moment.  And when he looked again, she was gone.

He sat looking at his hands where her hands had been, the dust swept from his skin where she held him.  He sensed the room getting lighter as the morning seeped into the room. 

There was a soft rustle from his workbench.  He looked up, saw the morning light now overpowering the lanterns hung over the bench.  The sound again, more distinct, the gentle tocking sound of wood against wood.  Something was moving there.

He straightened on the settee, poised to stand, but afraid to move.  He stared at the workbench, saw the movement now.  There was a gentle cough and a plume of sawdust rose above where he had been working. 

His mind whirled, not knowing what he was seeing, still feeling her presence, and hearing her words, trying to put it together with the impossible transformation on his workbench.

And then his son sat up.

Hope this finds you wishing on a falling star,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith