A YOUNG GIRL CRYING

Last summer, more than a year ago now, I heard the morning dew calling to me. From my window the fields stretched into the distance, then down into the hollow, the airless hollow, I called it.

The sun was dancing on the dew like a yellow butterfly. And all around there was greeness - wet, wet greeness. So I dressed and called for you and you came.

We went walking through the morning dew, kicking the pearls into the air, smiling. Happy people. Went walking into the distance to the sound of crickets and the shadow of a bird circling around the sun. We watched the bird’s shadow dip into the hollow, until it suddenly darted away into the haze of a steamy summer morning. I didn’t want to go into the Hollow.

But you did.

Standing there in the concentrated heat of the sun, I heard a young girl crying.

I placed my hand on your arm and asked if you could hear the tears, but your eyes were blank, you ears unhearing. So I stood and listened alone to the sound of grief, which hung heavily in the air around.

Slow, stifled sobbing.

“There’s no girl crying,” you said, taking my hand, pulling me up the slope. We ran back through the dew, pearls clinging to our legs. Our laughter rang in the air, and for a moment, drowned out the sounds of sadness in my mind.

We closed the door on summer.

As the snows advanced, covering my green field, nestling in the Hollow, a void as wide as my valley grew between us, and although we still saw eachother, the communications were broken. And we fell apart, I from you, like a shrivelled autumn leaf from a tree. I fell to the cold ground and you didn’t help me up.

Lonely days, gazing across the whiteness into the distance, as hazy as the future.

One day, when spring was hovering in the air as if afraid of the grey coldness, laughter was in the air; the laughter of two people. I looked out and saw you with a boy, running over the snows, welcoming the spring. Happy people.

I watched you run with him, until you were just two fleeing figures disappearing down the slopes into the Hollow. I imagined your feet sliding and slipping and the coarse breathing and gasps as you reached the bottom.

Turning my back on the window I stretched face down on my bed. I’m sure I heard a young girl crying.