Dearest Scarlet,
It’s been twenty years since you left and I still see you everywhere I go.
Waiting for the bus and in the shops. Playing piano in the hotel bar, a giant brandy snifter stuffed with ones that won’t quite be enough to cover the rent. I see a woman drinking coffee in a diner and remember your fuchsia half-moon lip print on the mug.
I remember the winter you spent holed up with your books, an atlas strewn across the shag rug, permanently open to the pages displaying the great map of America. Histories piled up by the bed as the sage and sweet grass burned. Swirls of smoke curled above your head and barely caressed your hair before disappearing.
I see you in my rear view mirror, in the convertible behind me. You’ve got the radio turned up loud, singing “balmy day, sweet sangria.”
I went to the south once, through the smokies and then rode down along the eastern coast. I swear I could feel you still, holding my hand.
Isn’t that strange?
Everyone knows the Smokies are most majestic in autumn, and as I sped down that mountain pass, I could hear your song.
No matter how fast I drove, you kept slipping away from me, like gold dust through my fingers. Like dried cherry blossoms crushed on the floor of a Metro train heading to Arlington Cemetery. Like tumbling towers. Like all those treaties.
Everything crumbling.
Everything done in the dark will come to the light.
Scarlet, lift your lamp.
We need you more than ever. Light our way… with fire.
