5/20/13

The Traveler and the Song Bird
By Michael McLean


"We'll travel the world, my dear." My words were the future, I thought, tellin' my love and I what it holds and where it will take us. They interrupted my thought, "Our adventures will be extravagant: a photo-album in motion, my love, flippin' ceaselessly, as one lookin' for their dog-earred page." She looked startled at my passion, my speed, havin' never seen this side of me before. "We'll traverse the green world, darlin'. Live in a dreamy haze of emerald rivers and green-eyed people greetin' us gladly, guaranteed!" I'm a salesman, presentin' this gem of an offer of our life together that she wouldn't dare pass up! "We'll only dream of normalcy because we'll never see it. It'll struggle to catch us, findin' refuge in our minds only when we stop to sleep, and we think of our past." Which is a mistake to do: we'll sleep when we're old and ugly!

"Will you love me then?" She interrupted. I must've blurted that one out, or not, maybe she'd read my mind. I felt violated and misunderstood, that wasn't what I meant. The left side of her thoughtful face was cupped by her tremblin' hand, while the right held a shadow in place, a stage for its dance.

"Will you love me when these sapphire eyes fall grey?" My love, of course I- "When Time catches me by the skin, tugging and tugging, wrinkling the fine fabric?" The shadow found its mate on the left of her ivory visage, and they waltzed, intertwined and spinning. "Or when the blur of our sprint fades, and we're static? Electric only when our feet touch beneath the wool sheets, not because we meant it, but because you're too goddamn hot?!" The shadow-dance was over, her hands, the curtains, hid the performance as she watered the flowers thrown onto the floor. "We'll travel at the speed of light. Time slows down upon reachin' those speeds, you know. It's been proven!"

My attempt to relieve the tension was in vain. Her hands dropped and she looked at me quizzically: those sky blue balls, life savers, floated in a blood-shot ocean of doubt, and inside of them, an endless blackness that I couldn't make out, nor understood. "What will you do when I'm dead?"

The word hung in the closeness of the room, a noose around the neck of those emerald oceans, greener grasses and future memories inside of the agin', now empty, photo album- "All of your plans, your future, leaving the past in your wake, it all brings us closer to the end. How, my wide-eyed widow-to-be, can one love a corpse?" She interrupted again, readin' my mind, knowin' my thoughts, without the ability to understand her own. I didn't have answers to her questions, to be honest, I didn't think about any of that. I guess it all had to come to a head at some point, for I am a time traveler, and she, a flightless song bird.


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