A Finer Shade

An open double-hung window of an 11th story New York apartment was the doorway to a sailing wind from the deep blue gulf of night sky. Bronislau Kaper’s “Invitation” turned slowly with a flutter that made the lines jump like waves. Some of fear and some the sound of birds in spring crashed in war in him often.

Only in her dreams they rode such waves, he’d call her his pretty little shadow girl in real life. Her mother, Julia, once his “rosy -cheeked dream of caramel skin” had known long before the day that neither would ever see him again. In Esme’s daydreams of youth, the beast lived not between appearances but in them. Taller, broader than the shadows cast by trees they’d pass as he walked her home.

The memory of such days would spin in her head like a slow moving carousel, sometimes with a melody she’d find only when remembering the path to her inner most reverie. Words would hang along the dark silhouettes of branches and leaves, everything whirling underneath the stillness of the pale sky, she’d pick some then sing them in whispers. Sometimes while walking anywhere she’d be beside him during his ring walk trying her best to feel the torment she imagined he must’ve felt making his way to his opponent. Oh how things had gone different had he not completely went away, she thought. The far reaches of himself to the point of no return he had been sitting on the brink of, leaving her few hints, if any at all.

She’d be left with her mother, often imagining herself as a thread that led the way back to their living room when Julia would lose her way atop the dresser. Whether a playful gloss or opaque, lost was lost, and Esme was like a jet through the perpetual fog. Lightning struck, the Steinway’s casters sent the vessel on a fateful voyage across the room. Awoken from the crash, Esme turned the corner of the hallway, approaching the billowing curtain’s embroidered sprigs of rosemary that skipped through Spring's night air and slid the window shut. The sound of little scurrying footsteps made her a bit uneasy, under a full moons gleam she still felt the blackness. The lampshade flickered before lighting the room.

Remaining in blackness, her father appeared, his eyes were bulging out of their sockets and glittered never brighter than right now. All she could see was his face, the makeup of shadows and beams, craters and plateaus that manipulated the display that was in her last memory of his smile, now a wicked contortion. In the ghoul’s eyes and devilish grin a goad and embrace existed concurrently, dark waters producing waves of fear and enrapturement crashed inside her leaving her spellbound at a hole.

Her mother’s nervous pace and a subdued yellow glow that permeated that Saturday afternoon had woken her up anew. Orbs of floating dust cast by it’s beams took his place, now residing in the blemished lavender wall. The conclusion to Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” had been reminiscent and manifested itself with the help of a force from the ocean blue enchanting an apartment’s living room. The guileful ghost of Ben Gunn sailed a fortuitous night determined to reach a longing Jim Hawkins. In the night’s witching hour he had succeeded. Marooned Hawkins and Captain Long John Silver, confined in the cold of a cavernous space, laid in the ecstasy induced by ghostly Gunn’s treasure of $20,000 in utterance of the timing of this latest appearance, speculating in jest to why he had waited so long. Broken up with gratitude.

They’d spoken facetiously and joked, thinking of funny ways the brown leather bag could have ended up there, skirting around what they knew in their hearts to be true. A little black notebook sitting on the floor of the bag would prove to be a truer treasure for his shadow girl. Half thoughts, mad rants, events that took place at different moments of his life made up most of the dated entries. The last was a poem he’d written six years ago, her 13th birthday. The last time she saw him.

“Eres mi sombra cuando me quiero esconder,

busco un brillo oscuro cuando el sol quema mi piel”

Fringed in smiles and hearts.

Laying down in the shade of a mango tree they sang in whispers together.