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Two Candles
By Melody Romancito
Before anyone had realized what had truly happened,
she was gone. She had been standing in the middle of a crowd of people,
then she suddenly vanished.
Her clothes, shoes and purse and the combs she always wore in her hair
puddled on the bricks where she had been standing, but she was gone.
The man she was speaking with finished his sentence because he was too
astonished to stop his flow of speech.
When everyone realized she was truly gone -- not just a trick of light
or wind, but undeniably gone, silence moved out from the center of the
circle of people and spread to others who had been standing near by.
"Where did she go?" another woman finally blurted out, then
confused shouts and exclamations spread as had the silence.
The man she had been speaking with picked up her blouse from the pile
on the ground, but he handled it gingerly, as if her disappearance was
a contagion.
"I ... I have no idea. How could she just vanish like that?"
he said, a frown darkening his face.
Then more confusion rang like a clarion through the group of people gathered
there.
But one man knew what had happened to the woman. It was he she had been
looking at just heartbeats before she disappeared.
He knew, but he was not going to say a word to this pack of people who
were beginning to panic. One man ran for the police.
The man who knew where she had gone slipped quietly from the crowd of
people and went home. When he got there, he lit two candles -- a black
one and a white one. The black was for the love they had once shared.
The white one was for new beginnings.
THE END |