There was an old wheel barrel adorning the centerpiece of the farmer’s neglected backyard. Grayed and weathered, splintered from the harshness of all those past winters and the scorching of the love-less sunrays.

Here in your shadows, I watch you slide, lost down the back of your old bedroom door. The very place a secret life bloomed from past youth, behind their eyes.

You thought they never knew but they always do. They gave and nurtured the very thing you now hold in twisted pieces in your hands. Your days filled with watching it melt away flake by flake, blown into a mite-sized dust, forever trapped behind your ache.

You barely search for a reason to breathe in again.

I have to see you implode sullenly but purposely. She’s gone and you cannot grasp the reason. Frustratingly, what I cannot speak to you in words, or touch you with in comfort, show you with in old home movies, is the one thing you refuse to see.

She didn’t leave you my love, she died.

Who would want to leave that smile? Who could ever walk away from the gentleness that is now more sorrowful than a lonely whale’s song as his mate is snatched by the cruel coldness of man’s harpoon.

She didn’t leave you, my friend, she died.

I cower in your prickliness and watch a sadness I cannot find a word to describe. My tears for you, I fear for you, will leave a discoloration no amount of time nor talk can fade.

So, I give you this one hope, for us and our survival of the most painful time of this life.

As I hold you close enough for you to share my heartbeat, watch the barrel my friend. Look at it still standing after thirty years of battering and cosmic abuse. It is worn and old. Still one-thing remains, watch it, and move into its reasoning.

He’s telling you to see. He didn’t die because you left him where he sits today so many years ago. He is still here waiting. With a little mending and a new coat of paint, an oiled wheel, and a strong hand, he will not be new but like new.

How different is your heart? How different is your will to love again?

My friend, you have abandoned your light. You have left it in the center of a desolate field of mourning. Turn now, see that your heart has not left, it did not die when she did. With a little mending and a new coat of belief, an oiled openness and a strong will, he will not be new but like new.

In his grief, he used the last bit of strength he possessed to lift an eye out to that vast backyard we played in as children. I was not surprised when I saw her standing next to a freshly painted wheel barrel, still slightly splintered, still visibly weathered, but filled with roses of every color known to man.

As the last tear fell from his drenched eyelashes, he lifted his head and heart then smiled once again. One last time she stood by me to help my friend, her love, and step over a bad patch then brought him back home.

I still see her from time to time and she’s always holding his beating heart. You can see the cracks from the shattering but each time they fade a little more. I know it’s just a dream but when we get to have a moment of true love in this life, if only to witness in sleep the sheer gleeful warm cloak it gives is worth the waiting.

By: K. Mulroney

(V)