The Parthenon

Maryanne Stahl

"But don't you ever think about me?" he asked when I said we shouldn't be sad. It was midsummer and the streets were full of people. We stood at the bottom of a bank's wide marble steps, gazing up toward the replica Doric columns. "Look, the Parthenon," he said as we stopped before the building. We were playing a game in which destiny had taken us to Greece, to an ancient life where we were together. "Of course I do," I answered but I had hesitated, and I saw in his eyes a flat surrender to the lie. "I do, but then I just don't let myself," I said. This was true. He nodded and we continued to walk. My fingers held the cool white cotton of his sleeve, luminous beneath the moon-globes of the streetlights. I held his sleeve more gently than I could ever hold his flesh. This was our last night together for who knew how long. We walked and walked as though we had somewhere to go. Later, alone, I stood beside my window. I imagined that he and I had climbed the high steps to the bank's locked doors. I saw us reflected in the glass as though there were two sets of us, and the other, ghostly pair was locked inside forever. I heard myself tell him the rest of what I had begun to say, what I would have said if we had stopped for a moment longer. "It is not so much that I think of you, but that I move within your presence, ever with me as the air against my skin, invisible and still and nearly imperceptible but for the fact my life requires breath. "Or you are the tender soughing along my neck, the breeze which all at once whips into a rough wind, threatening to knock me over as I grasp for balance. "Or you are the thin green leaf floating on the ocean currents that rise and fall within my chest, spiraling into a surprising pinch of pointed tip against my beating heart." I raised the window but could not see through the dark. I longed for wisdom and a fighting spirit.