A funeral shroud mist hung heavy on a morning dying before it was granted even the chance to live. As he walked against the endless flow of traffic he couldn’t help but notice the Rorschach forms of the melting frost on the bonnet of every car; their engines not yet sufficiently warmed to melt the fingerprints of cold. They tugged on his personal psychology, teased his unconscious. Was he nearly there?

The threads of memory drifted in the storm of his mind. He had long since given up trying to pull them together into a coherent tapestry, he could get close to a finished piece, history on the edge of cognition but then some unseen, un-felt force would snatch away the revelations of his primitive weavings. Giving up was easy, he wasn’t sure he wanted to remember anyway. What was worse: the horror of the past or the frustration of nothingness?

It didn’t matter. He could still remember what was important.

The liquid passion of her eyes: simultaneous molten steel and arctic ice, the flutter of the eyelash pulled you, helpless, into the chaos. A smile played across his face, a fragment of a memory; they said a butterfly fluttering its wings could cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Chaos theory reflected in the turmoil of the eyelash of a solitary muse. She was simplicity and depth, a haiku drifting in the wind. He found her in a rare moment of stillness. Or had she found him?

He could no longer recall.

He could still see her on that first day: in the café, sitting beside, not at, her table. One foot hitched up on the chair opposite giving an added air of nonchalance to her lithe slouch, the biker jacket hung away from her body and the t-shirt crept up just enough to expose a flash of stomach. Her face was beautiful with razor blade cheekbones, a delicate nose with the poise of, ballet dancer and subtly tempting lips. Her skin was pale but far from porcelain, there was strength to every part of her but it emanated from her face. It spoke of a life lived. And then those eyes: a siren song of passion and excitement to lull the world-weary. All this framed by an untameable sea of raven black hair. His soul had spoken and the heavens sent his saviour. Oil and water.  Darkness and light.

 He had not realised he stopped until she cocked her head in his direction and he saw the fire dance across her eyes for the first time. In that instant it began.

He shook the reverie from his head and, not for the first time, cursed why he could not forget that memory. A meeting that ultimately sent him down the spiral leading to this endless soliloquy. Once more a smile began its play across his face as he admitted to himself he would rather die than forget that moment of chance. He quashed the smile’s play and continued his solitary trudge.