A Jesus Story from Many Moons Ago

He sat by a window and waited until the last of people had left the street. Stepping out into the emptiness that had been a city in the earlier hours he noticed a girl with a sad, pleading smile. The thought of stopping occurred to him, but her smile pleaded for someone else. And he knew any attempt he made to comfort her would only be crowding, leaving her without even the privacy of being alone. When he reached the place in his path that he could no longer pretend not to see her, he smiled a passing hello, with the silent hope that she’d speak so he’d have reason to stop. She didn’t, but returned his smile with eyes that spoke only to parting well.

He continued his walk, not remembering where he’d intended to go. The shadowed smile of a pretty young girl captivated his thoughts, and left him with only the comfort of the road he followed. Normally it was his time to be peaceful, here on this patch of road so rarely used after 10pm. Tonight it had become both rose and thorn. Offering him sight of the passionate emotion he craved from the human race, and then carrying him away from it. For the first time he felt torn. The urge to go to someone who’d not called for him, and the understanding that advice not requested is not often accepted.

He’d been called many things, for many years. It varied from inaccurate to libelously wrong. He neither questioned nor lied. He did, on nights like this one, wish for someone to walk beside him. Someone to see in his eyes that he was lost, and would have no peace until the softly wounded smile of this girl was removed from his thoughts. He’d seen many people, many with pain and confusion pouring from them. He’d been walking this street for centuries. It had been his favorite since long before there were people here to build it. In that time he’d not seen such true and comfortable pain as was most likely overlooked by everyone else.

When the sting of her eyes had faded to a mild emptiness he returned to his window. As he passed the spot where she sat he lowered his eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry you’re hurting.” She was gone, as he knew she would be, but in the place she’d been was a black rose with the thorns removed. He wanted nothing more than to take it. To hold it close to his chest and feel the remnants of what caused this strong creature to hurt so badly. Instead he produced a violently red rose to be its companion.

In the nights that followed he did not take his evening walks, choosing instead to watch the girl who’d taken to sitting in the grass behind a row of bushes where she could only be seen from a window such as his. Her eyes pulled him, but he didn’t go to her. Her pain was her own, and regardless of what some had said about him, it wasn’t his to carry the wounded. Every night between 10 and 11pm she came. Sometimes with a book, sometimes with only the shadow of goodbye that had caught his mind in the beginning. The nights she was without reading material were his favorites. She looked around her as if unsure of what she might see. He suspected the question so obvious in her manner was who, rather than what.

He developed a habit of sitting at his window waiting for her in the evenings. And she never disappointed him. For nearly six months he saw her every night. He told her of his day, and stories of the past. He told her everything. All the things he’d never said. He told her how it troubled him to be seen in a way so conflicting with his own moral code. He knew she didn’t hear the things he said, and had she he’d have been unable to say them.

One evening she didn’t come. He waited for hours. He walked to the street, looked for signs of anything and found none. In quiet desperation he said, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” No answer came and he knew that hell was here. Standing in an empty street with a hollow scream that made it no closer to reality than an expanding heaviness in his chest. That could be eased only by forcing himself to feel until it no longer had power. So he walked. Stopping now and then to rest, but never sleep. Days passed, he didn’t know how many, but he felt his eyes take on the comfortable torture he’d seen so plainly only in her. And he understood.

He knew that, like she had, he would go back to the place he’d last seen her and wait. Sustaining himself, at first, with the idea that she would return. Later, as he accepted what he’d known already, he added food and water to his days, but rarely anywhere except his window. Excursions to the kitchen started taking longer, and the things that reminded him of her were less easily found. Eventually he remembered her only as a beautiful dream.

One evening, years later, he walked down a street following a wee bird that had caught his eye and saw a smile that had not fully recovered. He traced the line of her cheek, buying time before he forced himself to see that her eyes still held their symphony of loss. Such incredible sadness, in no other way visible. She’d gone into her house before he was close enough for even the best of memories to recognize him. He produced a black rose, removed the thorns, and left it lying across her mailbox.


Ending 1

The years passed, and he thought of her less. He didn’t returned to being one who had never truly hurt, but he’d grown so used to the smile that was never without a touch of wanting, and the eyes that never really smiled he didn’t notice. It had become a comfortable way. One he wouldn’t allow to leave for fear it would take with it all that she’d taught him to feel.

Returning from his evening walk he’d remembered the book she so often brought with her. “Flowers for Algernon.” A young reader’s book. He’d read it in the days after she stopped coming, something to feel her presence if only by the slightest of commonalities. It was beautiful. A powerful love story. The irony of it’s primary relationship being between a man and a mouse was lost in it’s display of genuine affection.

As his mind tried to recreate the sensation of the first time he read “And if you have time, please put flowers on Algernon’s grave” he turned the corner to re-enter a stairway that would take him to the window he rarely looked from anymore, and saw a black rose. He knew it would have no thorns, but picked it up to feel that a great ambiguity had last touched it. After replacing the rose he caught sight of the tail of a light, airy dress he could imagine her wearing on a night like this and followed.

After she’d gone into her house, the same one as years before, he stood by what he assumed to be her window and waited. Acknowledging that there was no where he’d rather be, he listened, hoping to hear her breathe with the serenity only found in sleep for those who truly see the world around them. There was no sound coming through the window, and no lights left on in the house when he realized that seeing this girl sleep had taken over his thoughts.

He opened the front door and walked to her bedroom. The bedroom door stood open and he watched her eyebrows tighten and relax with what seemed to be alternating pain and forced composure. He wanted to hold her, but knew that his touch would only disturb. So he knelt beside her bed whispering, “Do you believe me?” She stirred, but didn’t wake and said, “You awakened a love I didn’t believe in. It’s empty without you. I will go on, and well, but I miss you.”

He knew she was talking to whomever it had been that brought her to his window. He lightly placed his hand on her arm and spoke so softly even he wasn’t sure if he’d produced sound or if his touch had given him ability to send her thoughts. “You will not be alone tonight” Still well within the edges of sleep she told him, “You are an easy feeling of sanctuary.”

"And you are a magnificent obsession."

She slept and he watched until just before light. When he saw her face begin to tense, and he knew she would be waking soon, he leaned to her ear and said, “Do you believe me?” She was not startled as one would expect to be waking to a stranger in their bedroom. He pressed her hand to his chest and said, “Do you believe me?” She turned her head to him with an involuntary stiffening of her eyes and asked, “Do I believe what?”
“I love you”
“Who are you?”
"My name is one that has been abandoned by most, and misunderstood by the rest. The strength of emotion you have taught me is my vindication."
"What is your name"
"I am"