Sylvia? I can’t honestly remember your name. Sylvia sounds about right, the shivering essence, the sheet glass sounds of your name out of time, seem about right.
I had been there for longer than I should have and everything had gone wrong. Your live-in maid, your adopted mother in her eyes only, stared at me coldly as I tapped my suitcase down those ancient staircase steps, tip toeing homeward.
I remember you telling me that happiness was just the art of self-delusion, “I was born lying to myself,” you had said “so what difference does it make?”
I knew you were lying then, I knew in that moment. I had seen you smile far too many times before.
“Are you going to stand there, or are you going to come in?” I glanced to the left and then looked straight into your eyes. “The shadows fall differently do they?”
“Have I ever lied to you,” she replied.
“I’ve lied to you,” I called back.
“Then we’re both liars.”
I thought of your jettisoned relationships, all those long extinguished flames, love affairs alive in mind, but lacking true carnality in reality. Renegade memories aimed at wrecking the backcloth.
Before stepping warily into the morning cold, into those rainy fields of frost and magic, I took a pen and scrawled a final note goodbye “Good night, lady; good night, sweet lady; good night, good night.”
Robert Leeming 