Don't leave me here

He rose from the bed like a man going to war, or to a life of unending peace – resigned, afraid. He intended to walk away, from her, from that town and all those people who needed him to be… something.

But he had just filled her with more love than he thought he possessed. He had just surrendered to her the promise of everything he was. The only thing she ever asked of him, he had given.

A sigh later, he found himself hunched in the chair next to the bed, turned away from the sight of her, of the holy thing he had made of her. With his face in his hands, he waited for the courage to leave. But instead, a cool breeze from the river disturbed the curtains; a bird outside the window called.

He rubbed his eyes and blinked and there, suspended before him within the frame of the mirror above the dresser, was her sleeping form, like a painting, arranged within an artful drape of linen and silk and chestnut hair; a vision, a floating world.

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