Author's Note: I've been sitting on this for a long time (because it's weird and poetical) but my document tray is getting full. Not only that, this hiatus is endless. Maybe this will help a little. :D
~Q~
The Washington Monument by Night
Part One: The End in the Beginning
~Q~
Things were different now.
Patters and crackles fell all around her, the restless chatter of a sky relieved to share its misery.
Raindrops sparkled on the lawns, water glistened on the pavement, lights glowed like burrs in the mist and rain, which had kindly refrained from being cold on this wet, moonless May night. A bracing breeze blew her dampened hair back from her face as the solitary woman faced the monument that expressed everything she felt, yet could not say.
The stone goes straight.
A lean swimmer dives into night sky,
Into half-moon mist.
That night, it was cool and dry; this night it rained and the drops hid tears streaking down her cheeks as she stood alone and read the words again and again.
Nothing happens unless first a dream.
The words separated themselves, forming and reforming their history in the monuments that bore witness to the past.
First a dream.
Nothing happens.
Everything happens eventually. (He'd said that.)
But first a dream. (She'd begun dreaming after he assured her that everything happens … eventually.)
"You think two people belong together, but nothing happens." (She wrote that while he was dreaming, but she lived it every day.)
Everything happens eventually, but first a dream.
He had a dream, then he woke and...
*Nothing*
Just like the poem...
…..
*Nothing*
Closing her eyes, she shuddered when the wind turned sharp and shook a sob out of her.
Because things were different now.
A flicker of firecracker up in the clouds, the mumble of thunder down here below.
Her bags were packed. Her apartment was closed up and her flight was scheduled to leave in thirteen hours. His bags were packed, his apartment was already closed up and she thought he might already be settled in at Fort Bragg, from whence he would soon be departing for a destination unknown (to her) in war-fractured Afghanistan.
Everything happens but somehow she never expected this to be one of the things that would happen to them. That he would forget. That she would say no. That the dream they'd shared would fade away with nothing but a low, limestone wall to commemorate it.
They flanked it that night, their two long shadows like coal black trees standing on either side of the dream. His and hers remembered, but the dream that was theirs … forgotten.
Two trees are coal black.
This is a great white ghost between.
Now there is nothing but a tall, white pillar to look at behind the wall where he finally spoke.
It is cool to look at,
Strong men, strong women, come here.
They came here together that night. They left together too, but separated by the great white ghost of a forgotten dream.
. . . and stone shoots into stars here (that night)
. . . into half-moon mist tonight. (this night)
He was strong, she decided. He would move on as he'd promised, because he kept his promises and because:
Women said: He is lonely
Women would notice him.
. . . fighting . . . fighting . . . eight years . . .
Voices carried to her over the breeze, bringing company but not companionship as late-night tourists stumbled into her moment of silence. They chattered and they wondered who Carl Sandburg was; and why that quote and why it was here in this garden of monuments.
Softly, she recited the poem from memory, recalling the story of the iron man who dreamed and fought and a republic was born of the dreams of men. Everything happens eventually. Men such as these are forgotten without the monuments to remind us.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.
The monument engraved in her heart ensured she would never forget.
~Q~
Author's Note: There's two parts, I'm posting the second part right after this.