Just A Girl I Used To Know

He had loved her. Or at least that’s what he told himself in the dark, waiting for sleep to pounce. Or when the neon lights bathed him in their maternal glow. Or when he gazed across a saturated subway car at a young couple, lost in each other’s presence and completely oblivious to his. But the passing lights always drew his attention like a moth’s, until his focus resettled on the solitary figure staring at him in the window. He had loved her until she had said it one day, in a voice like shattering glass. She was gone.
But that was a long time ago. They had come and gone since with no significant upset, merely a hobby and barely worth mentioning. He carried on with life, more like the victim of a bad haircut than an amputee. He had lost something, no doubt. But until today, he had never really thought about it. It had nothing to do with her, though in passing he might have convinced himself otherwise. A creative fire, once devastatingly beautiful and fueled by an endless cycle of observation and fusion, had finally reached a point just past the horizon. It was dying.
Like the innocent victim of lethal disease, the knowledge of the existence of an end contributed in hastening it onward. Wasted canvases betrayed the stillborn ideas, suffocating in their lack of momentum. He was tired.

But this was his swan song. A masterpiece. His magnum opus. Her long, brown hair fell past her shoulders and a soft smile cast its shadow across the face of the sun. He painted her not as she was, nor as she had been. He painted her as he remembered her from a lifetime ago. And although that same lifetime may have distorted his memory, it made no difference to him. Here was a reality more tangible than anything he’d ever known. There she stood at the top of the hill, basking in the halo Helios himself placed upon her head. She looked down with mercy and compassion at the mortal below. He returned her gaze. Filled with sorrow for past sins, he returned to the religion of that summer and readily reassumed his role as zealot. This graven image, crafted by his own hand, made him an idolater once more. With every brushstroke, he disappeared more and more into his creation and withdrew further from the cold academics’ reality. He felt the grass between his toes. The sunlight danced on his skin and a gentle breeze tossed their hair. He could see the lake in the distance.
The breeze became a howling gale. Helios fled as the thunderheads rolled in. Roaring across the lake, lightning impaled the air and he watched helplessly as she ran down the hill for shelter. Desperate as he was, he lost her the light that flashed right in front of him.
“Who is that?” she asked, cracking the sky and closing the door behind her. The world around him shattered and fell away to reveal the studio. She sat the brown grocery sack on the counter and walked over to admire his latest work.
“Oh, no one…” he said nonchalantly with total disregard for his racing heartbeat. “Just a girl I used to know.”