Has it been so long? Are those straying thoughts no longer mine? What has changed in me and where is the girlchild who wrote in crimson ink by candlelight? Sometimes I can feel her there – like Lyra and Will in separate but parallel worlds, touching for a brief perfect moment, each others’ soul. And I revisit this yearning – though desire and ambition rule adult life – and I remember the enchanted evenings when snow lay upon the garden and the bedroom sill shone white at the height of summer.
The Scottish stream; storm by yellow afternoon, clear by night. The steeple in the misty dawn, almost ghostly, but beautiful; glowing, reaching, forever young. Legend in the present; a portal to an immortal land that cannot now be found, except in story, except in memory – that imperfect of things. And there was a brightness, leaving a trail like a fading footprint on the air – the high air where absolutely anything was possible…I know it…how long will I know it? Will it fade with time, with desire, eroded by ambition? I still look now, but when will I cease to look? – when it has been gone so long I approach it again unknowing? And only then would I be able to step into that place, only then, for I will not recognise it, and in my innocence I will dwell there forever, until another adulthood comes to take me away.
Girl of crimson ink – you live in me still.
