From: bodyjackal@aol.com (Bodyjackal)
Subject: Valentine: The mourning
Date: 14 Feb 1995 20:36:00 -0500

                    Valentine: The mourning

     He waits for her in the place they both dreamed of, in the
soft shade of a willow by the grassy bank of a small, cool stream
with water as fresh and clear as liquid diamond. The spring air
is warm, the scent of wildflowers and fresh-cut grass carried on
a gentle, teasing wind that ruffles the long tendril leaves hat
screen them from the sunlight bright and sharp in a cloudless
crystal sky.
     He does not speak, he cannot speak. His sad grey eyes stares
at her as she sits down beside him on the red and white plaid
picnic blanket, watch her as she begins to cry, tears wetting the
cotton jumpsuit she wears, her hair falling across her face.
Blindly she reaches for him, instinctively, part of her hoping
that perhaps just this once...........
     He vanishes as her control breaks, leaving her staring at
the cold blank greyness of cyberspace inside a virtual studio.
She cries, alone again, like always, as her mind unbidden calls
up the image she wants most to forget but can never, the smooth
block of etched black marble that is his monument, his gravestone
in a world without graves.
     And somewhere across the vastness of an electronic illusion
she hears a voice that is not her own, could never have been her
own for it is happy and she was never happy. The voice says only
one thing and is quiet again, leaving her with the silence and
the sound of her tears.
     Happy Valentine's Day.


copyright 14 Feb 1993  Joshua D. Work
                                   (bodyjackal@aol.com)