A whisper in the wind

It was her eyes that caught me first—deep brown with flakes of gold that shimmered like sunstones. When the light hit them just right, they sparkled with an etherealness that was mesmerizing. Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, cascaded to her waist, glistening like onyx as she knelt in her garden, hands buried in the earth. She was a healer, a medicine woman. Her connection to Mother Earth was undeniable, evident as I watched the way she closed her eyes, breathing in the wind that gently weaved through her silken strands. 

And she was the reason I was alive.

Her herbal concoctions lifted the darkness that had smothered my mind for years. Light finally seeping in where there had only been shadows. My father and I met her during a trip to the Navajo reservation, delivering medical supplies for a local non profit we helped out at. She was twenty-nine, I was eighteen, but age meant nothing to the fire that ignited between us. I found every excuse to return, our love growing like the pink blossoms on the dessert willow tree where we sat most days.  Under the vast Arizona sky, we shared whispered confessions, laughter, and stolen kisses.

“ Do you know the legend of the moon and the wind?” Scarlet’s sultry voice drifts through the night, low and hypnotic, as we lay tangled beneath our willow tree.

“Tell me,” I murmur, closing my eyes as the warmth of her skin presses into mine, her voice lulling me deeper into the moment as her scent—lavender, sage, and something uniquely her—wrapping around me like the desert breeze.

“Long ago, the moon fell in love with the wind. The Wind, wild and untamed, danced across the desert, carrying whispers of the earth and the scent of rain to come. The Moon, dark and brooding, watches over the world from above, bathing the land in its silver light. 

Each night, she stretched across the sky to touch his  stoic face, whispering promises meant for only him. But no matter how he tried, he could never hold her, never get her to stay.  Each night she would envelope him in her warm winds and dance across the desert planes as he watched from the sky, just to be gone again when the suns rays began to break through the darkness of the night. But their love was cursed, for the Moon was bound to the sky, and the Wind was forever fleeting.  She could never stay, and He could never follow.

Desperate to be together, the moon sought the wisdom of the great Spider Woman, the weaver of fate. “Please,” he begged, “tell me how I can stay with my love.”

“To shape one is to unmake the other.” The spider woman warns

“ I don’t care!” The Moon shouts

“ So be it.”  She concedes as she begins to chant a language as old as time. The world stills and the wind howls as she dissipates into the darkness.

“What’s happening?” The moon whispers as he searches the Arizona landscape for his love.

“ You were warned, moon.  The wind isn’t meant to be kept, she’s intended to comfort while here. To try and tether her is to change what she is. She now resides within the ethereal glow that surrounds you, moon.

“But I can’t see her anymore.” The moon whispers, his glow flickering as grief swells within him. The sky darkens, and the first drops of rain slip from its depths.

“But she will always be with you. Isn’t that what you want?” The spider woman taunts as she retreats into the willow tree where she lives.

“They say that when the moon is full and the sky is still, you can see her, shimmering in his glow—like a love that exists but can never be touched.” Scarlet’s fingers entwine with mine, her breath a whisper against my lips, as if daring fate.

 As the last embers of sunlight sank into the horizon, gold and pink dissolving into indigo, the night unfolding around, we surrendered to the pull between us just as the moon and wind did. Our moans becoming our love song, our bodies finding a rhythm as old and consuming as the ocean. It was a moment that entwined our souls forever and ruined me for any other love. She was my obsession, my salvation.

But we had stolen something sacred, something never meant to be ours. And that night was the last I held her.

By morning, she was gone. All that remained was a hastily scrawled note: Please, forget me. It’s the only way.  I will love you forever.

My heart fractured, my hands shaking as I read the words, the darkness threatening to reclaim my mind. I searched the reservation, pleaded with her family, but they all pretended she never existed. She had vanished like a whisper in the wind and I have spent every moment since trying to find my way back to her.

***

“Johnny, it’s time for your medicine.”  The plump blonde nurse smiles as she hands me a small plastic cup with two orange pills.

“Can’t I have a few more minutes with her, Spider Woman?” I ask solemnly as I stare at the illusion-dissolving pills before swallowing them with the tiny cup of water. “I can still feel her lips. We were kissing under our willow tree.”

The nurse smiles softly, her southern drawl slow and careful, like she’s afraid I might break. “Johnny, you know how fond of you I am, but you gotta accept the truth. Your love for that woman is somethin’ out of a romance novel—but it’s not real, darlin’. I’m not the spider woman, I’m Jenni, your nurse at Desert Meadows Psychiatric Facility.”

My stomach twists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her blue eyes darken with sadness. “Johnny, there is no Scarlet who lived on a Navajo reservation. She never saved your life because she never existed. You have erotomanic delusional disorder. Your obsession with the Navajo people created this false story and has exasperated your depression.”

My breath stutters. “My dad—”

Jenn squeezes my hand gently, “Your dad wasn’t part of a nonprofit. He was a car salesman who lost his battle with depression. You were only nineteen when he... when he unalived himself.”

Her words are arsenic, dissolving the dream I’ve built so carefully

“You’re only thirty-two. There’s still time.” She urges, But I shake my head, the weight of the truth unbearable as a tear trails down my cheek.

“Sometimes, the illusion is far more enchanting than the truth, for reality seldom lives up to the dreams we weave in the quiet corners of our minds.”  I whisper, as the little orange pills dissolve on my tongue, dragging me back to a world that has never felt like mine. Scarlet’s warmth fades first—her touch, her scent, the soft press of her lips. Then her eyes, those golden flecks vanishing into the sterile white of the hospital walls. And as the darkness rises, swallowing me whole, I wonder—was she ever really there? Or was she just a whisper in the wind, never meant to stay?

But outside, beyond the barred window, the wind sings our love song. It rushes through the trees, whispers through the cracks in the walls. And for just a moment, I swear I feel her there, just beyond my reach.

Then the wind stills and again I am nothing but a man lost in the silence she left behind.