Vanilla (Part 2)

Ahead in the street
She was wearing white I recognized the fall of fringe across her left eye and her confident gaint.
Parts of me wanted to touch her, wanted to dip into the soul of a woman so untouchable yet so painfully honest but parts of me feared that what I may find would tarnish the dazzling reality I had built for her.
I could write her an Olympian goddess in her white linen skirt that blossomed ever so slightly around her knees.
She could be my afrodity, an immortal perfection only she could do justice to, a Marry Magdalene perhaps, cloaked in secrets powerful enough to crumble the walls of faith.

No I would not touch her.
I dare not ripple the cesspool of captivation and poison it with the mundane.
I chose rather to walk in her shadows.
Hers a confident step that parted the pedestrians in her way like Moses parted the waters mine and uncomfortable duck and weave as I struggled to maintain the distance between us.
A distance so close that I could make out the fine hairs in her neck so close that I could smell the vanilla of her skin yet I kept her out of reach willing my finger tips not to reach out to her.

I checked the Knock-off again as the bar on the corner came into sight. 17:02
As I looked up she had stepped off the kirb stones onto the steaming tar to cross the street that lay like a ravine between her and amber light pouring through the windows.
The constant rhythem of the clack of her heals on the sidewalk paving quickened as she trotted across the black surface her white skirts trailing in the evening breeze she was a liposaner in a gracefull canter.
Splashed across the city noises.
Trucks
Cars
Voices
Foot falls
Sirens……sirens.
It was the human fascination with the macabre that dragged my eyes from the goddess in the street and searched the untidy maze of road and stone for the origin of the screeching scull splitting noise.
The damp mob on the pavement in front of me pressed me back as I found the electric blue flash of lights and the screech of tires and metal grew closer.
It showered her face in streaming blue light and for the fist time I saw vanilla display undisguised emotion but I was pushed further back caught in the retreating press.
I struggle against the bodies

I was afforded only moments to drink her up.
Only moments and I could drown in her eyes
I lived a hundred lives in the fall of her body.
It was seconds and my senses were grappling with the realization of her mortality, but my mind, my mind allowed me the stretch of a life time, one spent imprisoned by her embrace delirious from her sent my mind afforded me a thousand mornings with her a beautiful waste of time


The noise must have been unbearable it was the dull thud that boomed in my mind and paralyzed my body.
The police cars with their white and blue war paint ripped an open wound in the city streets. It was like summer lightning tearing closer to my vanilla.
It seemed that the city exhaled when the effort to swerve brought the car into a vicious velocity driven slide.
And then the thud.
I had tried to grasp her so many times but it was like trying to catch and hold onto smoke, perhaps that was why I clung to a bitter hope that she would evaporate ahead of the side long slam that must have broken her back.
But alas she would not be carried away on the chill that swirled among the high buildings.
No wind would sweep her away and perch her out of harms way

Her body was not twisted and contorted into the macabre puppetry of the pain her final moments must have afforded her.
I don’t know why I thought it would be.
The steam that rose from the road had swallowed her up as she fell and swept a curtain of ghostly silver across her face.
Her eyes were closed guarding the onlooker around me from pits of sorrow that swam in her hazel eyes.
And her hands, still warm in mine. Each perfect finger weaved into mine and I was a fool for imagining I could feel the blood pulsing through the fine blue veins underneath her cashmere skin


Peace.
There were no fancy words or flourishes I could bath her lifeless face in.
Her hair had come loose and the dark tresses framed her beautiful face the evening light burning red shards into the chocolate colors of her hair.
I understood now why people often revert to such an unimaginative cliché when revering to death.
Moments drew on and I felt the heat her hands dissipate and I held her tighter willing it to remain just a little longer.
People mulled about her I recall a paramedic check a pulls I knew he would not find.

“did you know her” it was a shout in a thick African accent from the medic at her other arm.
I don’t know how long it took me to respond because he repeated the barked question before I was able to stutter a reply. Was I crying?
“yes” it was weak and only barely audible over the voices and noises that amplified the horror of the scene.
“tell me her name”
Words that were never there died to dust in my mouth as I searched the Angelique face of a woman I’d never known.
I didn’t know her name, and yet I held her hand tighter willing the reality away trying with my every fiber to hold onto it at as the heat slipped from her hands and the sun kissed glow dissipated from her skin .
In desperation I reverted my eyes and searched instead for answers, or sympathy in the dark little face of the medic.
But I found another face nearby. In an ocean of curiosity and fascination he stood. Unassuming and sallow his shoulders were slumped.
It was the current of unmasked pain and open regret in the tearful grey eyes that made me let go of her.
I had intruded. Walked on holey ground