Forget-me-nots. Tiny, delicate blue flowers with bright yellow eyes. You placed a vase of them next to the candles in the moist, dark wooden bath house. For me to discover and understand as I stood naked and flush and soap-scented. But I did not see them. You told me about them before I left and I was deeply touched as you led me about the garden of botanical wonders and snipped beautiful blossoms for me. A huge bouquet of crimson and lilies and spice and fragile undulating petals. They dried in the car on the way to the airport. I still have them in a large glass jar filled with other such preserved memories. I am intoxicated when I open it and breathe in all that it holds.
Gesture. It was gesture of such genuine generosity. Pure & simple intent. I laughed with open joy at each new flower as we walked the garden paths. The wisdom in your eyes seeking the wisdom in mine. I could not look into your eyes because I feared drowning.
A purity of heart that knew that this moment would never be again.
I stand at the Horn of Kolka where waves of the Baltic from the southwest and from the southeast come crashing together in a violent churning of water. I lift up a handful of the white sand. It is suffused with minute bits of amber. Salt water moistens my lips, my face. The sand sifts out between my fingers. I cannot hold on to it. It is not mine to keep.
3/17/2001
Ingrid Karklins