Fairy

Laurier. When was the last time we were there? She looks around, and smiles. «Maintenant, je me souviens. Elle aussi, Louise était ici.»

«Tu te souviens.»

«Et alors, pourquoi prend-toi ce chance à t'en jetter dans le piscine? Sais-tu que je veux te noyer?» Elle rit, mais ses yeux sont sérieux. «C’est pas assez de dire la verité. Il faut que tu soit vrai, vraiment vraiment. Tu sais ce que je te dis?»

“I understand.” Something felt wrong about answering her, but what else was I to do? I was sad, and knew not why, not completely. There was an emptiness I looked past in myself for too long. I told myself it was anxiety or malaise, but it is something deeper. It is the hole that so many others speak of, the void that becomes my God if I am not careful. I see myself, and cease to exist. I hear myself, and become less a man than a voice, a whisper in a world without fairies, a scent of strawberry and vanilla in the wind at dawn.

Disappearing from the place where I last saw the soprano from Lyon, I am at the barricade, the one and only barricade. Sitting on the bench is not the stranger with the light blue dress, the one I speak of as a trope enigma, but her, the muse I cannot bear to show the world. “Why now?” she asked, tugging at a pigtail. “I thought you didn’t need me anymore.”