the feeling of space

I knelt over the vacant cinder-block border into vacancy, the dirt was iron rich , dark yet empty.  I thought about the day I spent an entire afternoon in her lavender and blush colored button-down gingham.  That was when the grass was potato-greens and the beds were all gladiolas and daisy.  I thought, "he loves me, he loves me not," and she chanted alongside me on the front stairs.  The slam of the gate as he returned from his work just up the hill, that black-iron structure looming in the background.  How's my girl?  Today, who does he mean?  

There is loneliness.  A loneliness much larger and grand than empty flower beds or the loss of a loved one.  There is the ever present reminder of their life, their love, their smell in the foreground and background of everything you see.   It is her sliver-white hairs in bristles of an old silver-plate brush, her finger-print on a measuring cup.  It is the way he sits there waiting to see her thinking nothing about her old grey hairs, but the affirmative daisy petals that flew away in the wind.  And he sits there in his seat, waiting to be carried away with them.

 he loves me.