TheBanyanTree: Amanda and Robert

[Monique Colver]

This was from a dream I had last night. Sometimes I dream stories and
images, sometimes when I wake up I try to capture them, and sometimes I
can, and sometimes I can't because I don't have the words to paint a
picture of an image, and it fades away so quickly. This time I swyped it
out on my phone before getting up, part of it, anyway, the part I could
remember.


______________________



It had been her idea to stop, she couldn't walk another step, and it wasn't
as if they had anywhere to go, or anywhere to be. "I'm so tired Robert, I
just want to nap for a bit."



He looked at her with those beautiful aquamarine eyes, and said of course,
it's not as if they had anywhere to be, or anywhere to go.



And so even though they were on the street, at the corner of Mercy and
Hope, they sat down.



It wasn't a busy intersection, but the cars still went by, mostly on Mercy,
with less traffic on Hope, but no one saw them.



No one ever did.



She hadn't known him for long, only a month or so, but life on the streets
passed so slowly she felt as if she'd known him forever. Knew his shambling
gait, the way he would lower himself to the ground as if he were melting
into it, careful not to dislodge even one bone of his lanky sleek body.



She knew he was sick, though he'd never said so.



She knew his story, and he knew hers. They were stories no one else wanted
to hear, and so they told each other in hushed whispers, as if others were
listening though no one was.



She had a blanket she carried with her, because she was always cold, and
she wrapped it around herself while listening to Robert talk.



"It's a good day, Amanda," and she had to agree that indeed it was a good
day, not too sunny, overcast like they liked it, a bit windy, but not too
much. The sun was too much brightness into the dark corners and there was
no escaping it, so they loved the days with clouds.



She laid down then, just wanting a bit if sleep, and then Robert laid down
too, on his side, his feet by her head, facing her, so he could look at her
while she slept.



She noticed how much redder his face was today, his cheeks an angry umber,
though anger was not a word she associated with him. He kept talking, and
before she drifted off she heard him say, "Might take a bit of sleep
myself."



When she woke it was an hour or so later, maybe two or three, but not yet
dark, the time of day that usually, before she met Robert, had made her sad
with its potential and heartbreak for the next day. He had changed that for
her, talking her through the slow nightfall so she no longer feared it. She
saw him then, right where he'd been when she had fallen asleep, his eyes
closed and his face drained of color, and she knew he was gone.



She thought she should have been sad, but she wasn't, and she smiled to
herself, and then she went back to sleep to join him, giving not a thought
to whoever would find them.


M