Vela Damon

When We Used to Sparkle

She said she'd be here, in this place with the diamond dew and moldavite moss, this place where we sketched sapphire sakura and struggled for perfection.

So long ago, that seems. When we still saw color. Before our lives turned hematite.

I've thought of her so many times. Not everyday, as people always say, as I always believe to be lies. Even those closest to us slip our minds, lack clarity in our mental images. How could it be true of someone so far away?

She's married, I've heard. Not from her. We haven't spoken since that last morning in the diamond dew, after that last night under the spinel sky.

The only words have been electronic, and once. Yesterday. I’ll be there at dawn, like always. I'll see you, if you can.

I didn't send a reply. Everything I tried to type seemed too empty and too full at once.

I've wondered after her husband, her children. If the first deserves her, if the second should've been mine.

I've wondered if she still sketches, or if everything so important then has been relegated to the past.

I've wondered if she still rises with the sun, if at dawn would be an oddity now.

I've wondered what she thinks about whenever she awakens, when she drifts off to sleep, when she's sitting in traffic or waiting in lines.

Where does her mind wander during all those meaningless moments that congeal into hours, days, weeks...

Has her time been spent more wisely than mine? Has she devised diamonds while I've merely dabbled in dirt?

I wanted to borrow a cassiterite car, spend my savings on a saussurite suit, lie about my accomplishments in iolite intellectual tones.

But in the end, I've arrived as I am. Scattered, foolish, mediocre.

Why should I pretend, when it hardly matters, now. When it wasn't enough to be composite, polished, brilliant.

I've wondered if anything would've been enough, then. I've wondered if we knew enough to define enough.

This place hasn't changed as much as we have. Still the same diamond dew, moldovite moss, sapphire sakura.

Still dotted with people of the same age we were then, sketching their struggles at perfection.

I'd like to think things will go differently for them.

I'd like to believe things had gone differently for us.

She's here, standing under that last sapphire sakura.

She doesn't look like I remember.

I wonder what she'll think of me.

CP

Vela Damon grew up in the rural south and now lives in Texas. When she's not writing, she's reading, cooking, watching anime or out enjoying live music. Her work has appeared in Foliate Oak, The Story Shack, Short-Story.me and several other publications. Find her online at www.veladamon.com