Storied By Josh

Flowers bloomed early that year. The sun rose and shone with more warmth than most years. She used to plant these when it was summer. He would watch her water the flowers and in his memory these images were preferable to others. They were an old friend he could call on now, sometimes.

The girl with the sunkissed hair.

He coughed a little more than he did before and he looked for the blood in his napkin but it never came and though his days were lonely and his nights were unbearable he was a coward. So he waited like all the old men wait for death to come, hoping for the very best visit, at night during sleep.

The midday would warm his bones as he stood staring toward the mountains. They jutted up, their trees were a beautiful green thing in the winters, but the leaves in the summer brought the birds and she used to tell him the names but now…now they eluded him. Too much time had passed.

A red bird danced in the sun and came near him. He left nuts and seeds out for her. She never came to eat. Only to visit. She had come every week for the last five years and would sing songs.

She would sing songs for the girl with the sunkissed hair.

It was better than any song he could compose.

 

Their home was a small place, with a fire place that he never used anymore. She loved it but since she left him in the middle of winter, he preferred the cold floors to the smoke, and the memories of her reading to him when his sleep wouldn’t come broke against him like a heavy wave, so he left it, cold and neglected in the corner.

This morning he woke up and talked to her, like he used to. He had known her for long enough that he always knew what her reply would be. But this was beautiful to him. She was strong like a diamond, and reliable like steel. He knew that at the end of the work day, when his strength had waned and his patience was spent, she’d be there, waiting sometimes, sometimes busy but always ready to be his again.

In the summer the sun would shine down on them as they tilled the land. As they puttered around the house. When they were young so much could be done in a day, and as they grew old: so little. But it didn’t matter because she was always there to work with him.

They would sweat together and tell the same stories with the same endings that everyone but them found useless. To the two of them it was treasure.

The stairs fell apart as he stepped on to them one day. “Well, honey,” he said, “it seems the stairs took a shit.” They had cut him as he fell through, but he had learned to dress wounds and did so. “I should probably fix these before I fall and break my ass. Come keep me company while I repair them.” She handed him a hammer, but really, he did it himself. He would look over and she would still be sitting in her chair with her favourite blanket, letting the sun warm her. If she told him it was to rain tomorrow, he probably just heard it from the weather man. She sat, quiet and lonely. She spoke about when they were young, in reality, it was his memories. Still, she told him she loved him when she remembered that she did.

“I love you too, my sunkissed girl.”

The river wasn’t entirely swift and he could even keep his balance at his age. He was never good at fly fishing but as he grew older he found it was relaxing. She would sit on the shore and drink wine from a glass and tell him where the fish her jumping. He would swear at her and tell her he saw them. She’d say something about how if he had he wasn’t catching any and he would be rotten for a little until she would call him up for a glass of wine and then things would be okay.

“I’ll never learn to fish properly.”
“The fish here are disgusting anyway.”
“But they are cheap.”
“Well not if it takes you all day to catch dinner. Let us go to town and buy a proper salt water fish and I will cook it for you.”
“Alright, damnitall.”

They would start their old car after some trouble and he would drive and sometimes she would but mostly only if she thought he was going too fast.
“You drive like your father.” He’d tell her when she’d get behind the wheel.
“Well he had a long life, so something he did was right.”

Now the car started with the same amount of trouble and he would drive into town alone. He never bought fish for dinner.

 

When the hot months would come the sun would write a love song on her hair and highlight it blond. He would tell her she was sunkissed and she would laugh at first and then hold his hand and kiss him on the cheek. They would walk together before the sun was too hot and say hello to the locals in dialect. By this time they were older and had lived here in the valley longer than most of the local inhabitants. She bought him Lederhosen as a gift and he had worn them to a bierhaus once. After he slaughtered the language and the staff had giggled endlessly at him he proudly proclaimed that he would never throw out his outfit. They became very drunk.
Now he would get drunk alone and the lederhosen sat alone in a dresser. They lay folded where her clothes used to go.

She fell over one day as they were working. The doctors told them it was heat exhaustion and to not work as hard in the garden anymore.

Then she fell again and again.

When she forgot the name of their town he took her to Munchen “to see a proper doctor.” The prognosis was clear: rapidly advancing dementia. They told him she would forget where she was, what she was doing and eventually, who he was. He punched the doctor and broke the doctor’s nose. The doctor wrapped him in his arms until he cooled down a little.

He apologized and the doctor told him it was alright. “You’re not going to charge me for fixing your nose, are you?” He asked the doctor. The doctor shook his head.
“Nein. Unsere Regierung deckt diese Kosten ab.“ The doctor said.
“Entschuldigung.“ He said. I am very worried.

After a few months she forgot to take showers and he’d remind her.
Then she would forget where they would sleep. And that she was supposed to be in bed. Occasionally He would find her in the living room looking over old movies and she would want him to tell her what they were and how they went.

Much of his time was spent with her. The garden became weedy and then died. The brush grew back and the house became creaky. He did not care.

 

The Girl with the Sunkissed Hair needed him.

One day he went to town to restock groceries and he came home to a note on the door. It told him:

There are a few very special moments in one’s life.
One is when we are born.
Another is when we discover who we are.
Mine was when I found you. You are my world and this is beginning to collapse.
I forgot who you were two days ago. I took to reading my diary to remember and all these things I have written are now forgotten. I cannot go on like this. I watch you grow even older than you were a day before. Before long I will not even recognize you and this will become such a sad story.

I have always loved you and even now I am ever with you.

Leave me here. Go and find a life you deserve.
Do not go inside.

 

 

Of course he did.

 

 

He took up smoking again. It tastes disgusting but they say it can take you if you cannot take yourself.  And she would chide him and tell him this is a disgusting thing but she isn’t here and the bird can only sing for so long.

The mountains are large and formidable. He looks at them. They are great and will last much longer than any man or woman. His pulls the cigarette out of the pack with this hand that shakes worse than before. She cannot care about this smoking, she cannot care about much anymore.

The sun tucks behind the mountain.

The rays die behind the evergreens.

He watches the girl with the sunkissed hair water her flowers in the sunset.