Spring 1984
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Wednesday, May 19, 2010 5:44 PM
The wonder of living is often lost in our busy world, but Skye never failed to surprise me. She would wake up smiling, her hot cheeks full of sleep and whipped cream as she ate the pancakes I made her by ritual. Summers with her were glorious and floral. Evenings spent on the balcony with bottles of pinot noir and empty cheese packets, often ending with the intense intertwining of bed sheets and soft moans. She would then ask me to brush her long chocolate hair that fell to the curve of her back. I couldn’t resist reaching out and smothering my face with her soft strands, breathing in the warm, milky scent of her skin. What could I say, she was beautiful. She was my Skye, full of glowing stars and moons that changed with her cycles and desires.
But I knew that when she was alone her face fell, her eyes became blank. She would reach out for the nearest cigarette and fill her lungs with bitterness and weight. Too often she felt isolated, shrunken, empty of voice. I would find her asleep by the fireplace, delicate black swirls running down her temples. Once her mother had died, Skye reverted to painting. Her brushstrokes thickened with anger and torment, burning the canvas and creating a permanent cloud of darkness. It wasn’t too long before she hung in the air around me like a ghost, just wisps of her smiles left in the cupboard, or at the bottom of the bathtub. And then one morning, I woke up alone.
A neatly folded note was tucked under the edge of her pillow, and it read itself to me before I even opened it. I spent months trying to find her, but the Skye I found was a mere shadow of the her former self. Things she never told me left marks in her eyes, and then an evening came where she stood at my doorstep, cradling a bag of groceries. A dinner stood before me, steaming with smells of spices and an old warmth that I craved ever so much. She wrapped herself around me that night, savoring all the love I had for her, and then went home. The next morning I bought her fresh bread and fruit but she did not answer the door. All that was left was the little silver key she tied to a string on my wrist.
I found her body in the bathroom, as pale and eternal as it was in my mind. And so there I was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these photographs of her. One by one, under the lamp, I gradually moved back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved. And I found it.
