The Boy Who Lost His Smile

They whisper
Eyes wide with empathic fear
Was it something about his posture?
Something about the way he never looked?
Or was it the faded letter held in bandaged hands...

Careful eyes
Sidelong glances
The gossip and wonder at his silence
And why he sits atop the hill
watching the sun
rise

alone

Darkened words leak through fearful voices
Tongues to tell of a terrible tale
Of a young man
a young woman
and a departed smile

Some say it was lightning
Some say it was the aged oak
Some say it was the will of God
Some say two disappeared that day

He knows

When the lightning struck the old oak
Their shelter from the weeping sky
Tossing it torn and smoking over the cliff
He watched

Pulling her away from the cliff he watched
It was her hair first
fading like a fey mist into the night
She grew light in his arms
Alarm gripping the edges of her eyes
As she began to blow away

Dust in the wind

She fell from his arms
Whispery voice calling out his name
He answered her call each time
"I am here
I am here"
But she blew away into a clear night sky
Her body fading to a silvery blue dust
His heart turning to ash

They found him thus
Fingernails gone
Hands bloody and marred
Sitting in a small hole of mud
It was said he spoke only once since that day
When they pulled him from that hole
He opened tear wracked eyes
Moved those cracked and bleeding lips
Speaking softly in the blacksmith's ear

"I'm here."