Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens

It is a distant mist where I once roamed; I never found a home.
Now, the hills and sea are only a memory.
Yet the girl who walks among them and saw me is still in my mind’s prison and my heart’s fire, burning with the longing for her presence.

In my memory, her laughter is an unwritten song never composed, and her smile an unpainted masterpiece.
My truth was wrapped in silence during my time in the land of rolling fog and pink skies.
I hid my love, leaving no trace or treasure maps as I held this truth close to my heart.

Time moved on, the ferry’s wake long faded, and mountains now surround me. I still feel her presence, in my dreams, she whispers, gentle and proud, I imagine.

I wonder if she felt the unspoken call, the unsent letters, that remained in my madness. Did she feel the unvoiced beat of my pulse?
Or were my emotions only a polite and meaningless interaction in a distant past?  Or maybe this was the love story of a lifetime, both aloof, to the fine nuance in the air.

Each day, I walk through the valley with its Idyllic ponds, swans, and beautiful trees. Yet in my mind’s eye, I drift back to Orkney’s days, a silent confession left unsaid now lies with ghosts in my heart where doubts tread as I grapple with the burden of this silent affair that lies within me.

A truth is left unspoken. Now, who has been left helpless in their own foolish fear? As dusk falls, the candlelight lights up the words to be written. Will the poet’s bravery bring a chance to reveal what has been felt from my presence, that which I have concealed?

 It is grieving for what has never been in the space between regret of “what if” and hope’s “illusion, as I ponder the sight, so to speak, her name.

As I tell my story, the chapters turn, and the past becomes a guide, yet I feel my heart’s restlessness, still wandering to where truth resides. Will bravery ever be found, or will this love forever be suppressed?

Now, I am in the bittersweet of the present moment, with a desire to move on as a conflict unfolds, yet is this story still untold?

So here I linger, on the edge of both dreams, In a land where nothing is quite what it seems. For now, I embrace this confused heart’s plight; between forgetting and waiting, for the treasure of my heart.

©️ Elke.T.B.Stevens 19/08/2024