That Old Timber Farmhouse

     There it is, that old timber farmhouse, still abandoned, still standing in the middle of nowhere. You look a little older, a little more weathered than when we first met all those years ago. How I love this quiet that surrounds you as if humanity were dissolved and removed from this hidden world that hides you, a grand relic, and a token of my most loved memoir. You are the keeper of my history, and whilst the wild scrub and snaking plants have swaddled you in their grasp of life, you keep celestial echoes lively within your heart.

 I put my hand to you with a longing to relive a time that passed so long ago, hoping that something may spark or connect in some mythical way by this crude contact. Perhaps it is a gesture of mere affection for something you and I shared, something the world would know nothing of, for it is ours and shall always remain so. Your timber door is parched from the charring sun, grey and brittle yet unyielding. I smirk affectionately, for we are the same. You creak in much the same way, your joints as rusted as my own.

 Inside this old haunt, I can smell green things, leafy things and intrepid age. Your windows are varnished moss, it is dark in here, yet I can feel the magic of resonance; it is the sweet page of yesteryear and those countless subconscious triggers switching on the lights of nostalgia.

 So many years have passed since that night. You were younger back then, though still unkempt; I would say another thing or two we share in synchronicity. Like a blue bolt, the rain came in cloaked in darkness, carried on some magnetic cloud attracted by our predicament. I could swear that it waited until directly over me before sending down the sultry deluge. You beckoned us, come shelter, and a choice was offered, jog the few hundred yards back to the car in the downpour, or the fifty yards to your sanctuary and wait it out.

 She, made the same choice as I and headed for the cover you offered. I see the table in the dim light here, the very same table she and I put down our wicker baskets of strawberries on that night, freshly picked from the fields which surround you. We laughed before we even spoke a word, something of an ice breaker, two strangers picking strawberries, taking shelter from the storm in an isolated farmhouse. It sounds romantic, semi-gothic, and a far cry from today’s world, where the first thoughts would be of sinister and peculiar intention. That rain persisted for hours, and when I think back now how comfortable we became, it was as if neither of us wanted the rain to stop. We had escaped the madness of the world and our clockwork lives and had found a moment, secreted away from all that neurosis and chaos; it was beautiful.

 I use my sleeve to scour the lichen and moss from your window, and some greater diffusion of light comes in. I see the old hearth, blackened and with some green dankness grown upon it, but I know without question, those cinders and charred remains are from the fire we made so long ago. I shake my head with disbelief, for time has preserved the fossil of my encounter with her, and you, my dear custodian, have waited tirelessly for my return. I touch with solicitous fingertips and feel the fragility of the withered relic, the soot on my tips is undoubtedly something of a miracle; what commodity or dose of consumerism could afford me a moment such as this?

 I can feel the warmth from those flames right now as if they are aglow before me, and that aura, that wonderous amber glow on a dark night that turns every sharp edge to smooth fulfilment. She ate that first strawberry, glazed in that ethereal light, and I knew at that moment, I had never seen such a thing of enchanting beauty. I think that was the exact moment that I fell in love. A stranger ate a strawberry and laughed freely, and I discovered the spell of infatuation.

 “Annie,” she grinned, and for a moment, I was adrift, forgetting to reciprocate with my name. I fell into her blue-grey eyes, her spirit, the smile which remembered all those youthful freedoms and dared me to consort.

 I look upward and see a sliver of light penetrating through the roof. Could that be the exact spot where the rain came in on that most beautiful night? She smirked wickedly, seeing me in such a stupor, and as I clumsily opened my mouth to speak my name, she pressed a finger to my lips. My heart races again as I recall her leaning toward me and then she placed a quick arresting kiss upon my teetering lips. Oh how that moment still mesmerises me, and then the rain came in through the hole in the roof, and we laughed heartily to the symphony of the summer storm, electricity pulsing through the fabric of the air, through the very soul of a reality unimagined.

 She never knew my name, and I have lived with the regret of that, and of why I let her leave when the rain stopped, with only a passive and almost embarrassed goodbye between us. I often think of her and that magic which existed so briefly but endures indefinitely, but then you know that my old timber friend, for you know and keep the secrets of mortal folly. I wipe a tear from an old lamenting eye, just as I had wiped away the raindrop that fell only a moment after that magnificent kiss; why are magic moments so fleeting?

 I turn to face the exit and to leave these memoirs safe with you in this hallowed ground, and I am undone by sudden dreamlike stupefaction. A basket of fresh-picked strawberries set upon our antique table and a flapping door.

“Annie?”