As I watched you this day, the sunlight glinted off your skin; brushing your smooth shoulder, like silk. Your voice, so familiar to me now, after all these years, sounded as young as it did the first time I glimpsed you. Your infectious smile, teased me, as it always does. When you sang that little melody; I sang along with you, to myself, and smiled at how silly I felt doing it. When you walked out into the raging storm; and I sat safe and warm, curled up in my old, comfy chair, watching you venture out alone; I cringed. When the wind tore at your cloak, and the roiling gray above you pelted your upturned face with hard rain... I shivered with you... as you pushed out past the porch light, into the evening's darkness. When after long hours gone, you returned, and cried: I cried with you. And you always return, in your blush of youth, like a brisk intake of clean, morning air. And I always marvel at the preternatural flush of your skin, the wet and shining fervor of newness in your eyes... your never ending vivacity. On the silver screen you are as fresh today as you were many, many years ago. On that reel of plastic film, you haven't aged a bit, and we, through the years, have. The illusion of youth is still yours, to share with all the world. While our phantasm of youth is a fast passing memory. Each moment in the now, becomes the yesterdays of all the years that separate us from your illusion and ours. The plastic of your presence--the flesh and blood of ours. Yet I envy you your seeming eternal youth--your ever supple flesh; silky, gleaming hair; lithe body; the sparkle of innocence, feigned or not, in your eyes. But there is another you... an older spectre--perhaps even only a memory, is all you are. As each day passes, we age--together; you, and I, and them... except for your celluloid self, it is ever ageless. And the weight of each day pulls my eye to glance around me, at the collective *we* and wonder... How long ago did the separation occur? At what point did time shift; when once I wouldn't have noted your youth, or mine? When will it shift for those I share my world with? It probably shifted, for the real you, before I even realized I would grow up--when my childhood world was all inclusive, and you didn't even exist within my reality. Just as you likely don't exist in my reality, now. I suspect you are aught but a memory--gone on to your other existence. It is a curious process, is it not? The passage of time. I wonder at what point it shifted for you? Did you stare at the *old* you on the screen with a gasp when it happened? Or did you simply, one day, gaze closely at yourself, the real you... And quietly whisper, "Oh my!" *** Copyright by Kathy Pippig Harris |
