Muddied Memories

Muddied Memories

She scribbled until not an inch of the sidewalk square shone grey. A mosaiced quilt of colored chalk taking its place.

Standing back she looked down upon the scene; a boy of roughly fourteen handing flowers to a little girl. They were the centerpiece in a carefully drawn heart surrounded with a wild tangle of bloom bearing branches. Only a smile was missing from where it had been before, when it all began so long ago on that cool spring day in that flower filled garden somewhere in Sweden or maybe it was France, she never knew, but him...
Him, she could never forget.

His eyes had shone like sweet black cherries, his hair  like dark melted chocolate and when he smiled, something she’d made him do with ease, dimples had dented his olive skinned cheeks.

Neither of them knew then that she would be his muse for he had yet to write a single song, but she would become the one…
The one that his mind and heart would hold while his pencil scribbled and his fingers strummed him all the way to fame.         

She'd planned to draw a chalky quilt parade, a tribute to those days, each square a moment she still remembered so clearly it was as if time stood still. But the memories stung more than she'd imagined. And drops like rain, but salty like the sea, splashed on the lifeless flowers, but were unable to drowned the pain

Her watery facade looked skyward, searching dark grey clouds threatening. Her ears hoping to hear rumbling thunder in the distance, signaling a rain that would wash it all away, but the storm remained inside and she couldn't stop the flood. Lightening bolts seared her heart as her sneakered foot stepped and smeared, ground and spread, mixing the colors to mud…

And then, her pockets filled with broken chalk and her heart with broken dreams, she turned and walked away. Dull brown footprints followed her for a few steps and then disappeared the way he had one cold autumn day...