Demon Stories

Diana: Warm Lily, 1875, India

Diana
Warm Lily
1875, India

I can't remember your face. All I can remember are your hands, your hips. Perhaps if I really remember, I know your lips. Soft, tender...loving. The way you whisper my name, the way your mouth sounds when you say your favorite word: "Dee-ahn-nah". 

I'll never forget you completely. You're under the earth now, but you're still here. I feel you all around me. What did you tell me about reincarnation, how life always goes on? How you'd still be here, you'd still be beside me no matter if it was in your current form or not? How you bowed your head, still smiling when I told you no, and bravely told me all things don't die, not really? When you told me this I could have cried. You told me I was no different than you anyway, just that I simply live all my lives at once, with no need to be reincarnated because I was perfect.

Your stone is modest, placed in the ground flat. It is a small, hand-sized smooth but rough stone. You would have wanted it this way. Never wanting a fuss made about you. That's one of the things I liked about you. Though a man of high birth, you were always modest. You didn't care about mortal things like money or worry. Your spiritual calling was much higher than that. How lucky I was to have you care about me. And yet there's the catch. I was not something which a mere mortal could care about. 

I wonder if you are the grass under my bare feet. Maybe you are the water lilies in the pond. Perhaps you are the fish which hopes for a small morsel as I step past. Perhaps you are it all. Perhaps you are the whole earth, wrapping your loving arms around me again as the whispering wind flits by, trying to say my name to get my attention. You already have my attention. You will always have my attention. My lily, my wandering jasmine. My Javana.