There she is again, sitting. Always sitting. I've seen her sitting in a thousand places; half real and half in my dreams. She sits in libraries, in meadows, in post-apocolyptic Russia under the unforgiving Asian sun. She sits in doorways, hallways, parkways and skyways. She sits in all kinds of weather in all kinds of seasons. She has sat forever, and will forever sit in the within the columns of my mind.
Today it is October. Her name, I think, is May. May Roddenberry. That's not her real name, I think, but that's what I call her. She doesn't know I watch her. At least, I think she doesn't. If she does know, she must enjoy me watching her sit, because she is never self-conscious. She never tries to limit my watching in any way. She knows I'm harmless, if she knows of me at all. I'm only intrigued.
Today, it is 1939. I can tell by the way she is dressed: she has on supple suede boots, high heeled, brown. It's raining today, and she is wearing her big brown felt hat, her inclement weather hat, the one with the feathers. It's broad brim keeps the light drizzle off of her red-gold curls and creates a curtain of waterdrops in front of her face that might part long enough, if you're lucky, for you to see her as I do. She is a happy girl with eyes of irrevocable sadness, hidden behind the faint and lingering smile on her lips. Today she is writing a letter to someone, I don't know who. A long lost love, I imagine, who will undoubtably mistake the wayward drops of rain for tears from her perfectly green eyes.
She sits beneath a fountain, on the edge, in the rain. The lace of her white corseted dress shows no sign of the rain nor the fountain...it does not hang limply nor cling as it should. It's as if the dress is not in today's day, but in yesterday's or tomorrow's, where the weather isn't as soggy as in this one.
The morning rain begins to fall harder, but the canopy of trees in this courtyard protect her from the heaviest tears of the forlorn sky. The couryard, the garden, is vibrantly green, vying for the upper hand in it's contest with her eyes. Where it is not green it is white and marble, but even then the monotony of the carved pristine stone is broken up by veins of curling ivy. There are beds of flowers, of course, long rectangles of deep blues and purples. This is an old place, and grass has grown up between the cobbles
in place of mortar, but it is well kept and in no way detracts from the beauty of the haven or the girl.
She's wearing her jewels today, but only a few. She doesn't always wear them, and sometimes she wears too many just to show that she can, but today they serve to enhance and blend with her somber colored mood. A swirl in the opal at her throat reminds me of waking from a dream, when everything is hazy and uncertain and wonderful.
I feel guilty watching her. I feel like I'm invading her most secret moments, observing her perfectly crafted forgotten era in my once-white Chuck Taylors and brown corduroy shirt. The denim of my jeans begins to bunch in uncomfortable places and I squirm, trying to loosen it, trying not to attract her attention.
A small bird, a chickadee, lands on the fountain edge near where she sits, as curious and captivated as I. It hunts around her, searching for a crumb of bread or a juicy insect that has escaped her clumsy human senses. Finding nothing of interest on the stone, it turns it's attention toward her. It is not startled, though it knows it should be. After a few inquisitive chirps, the chickadee flitters off, straight at me. Her eyes follow it's flight and then, for the first time, connect with mine...and she smiles.