#2: the cloisters

Katherine of the Cloisters—she was the first.

A native of my Ithaca, we met in our seventh summer at a local academy, the chosen students of the same instructor. What little I remember resonates with the gifts she gave me—a group portrait, her smiling image already slipping in the mind's eye; and a polished stone, which started as a gift from Katherine's favorite teacher—who herself had come across it on a morning walk by the beaches. I imagine the feeling of slick sand rushing between the toes, and the honk of hungry seagulls.

I have misplaced the stone since then. Believe me, I looked.

We were friends, but we sketched drawings of our common home to be, with rich detail unexpected from children, untrained. We sketched, and we held hands that cold summer morning in the hills, two tiny figures walking slowly amidst the mist that had settled over the park.

But then—pause—slowly, as slowly as these words can go, we saw the castle emerge from its grey shroud, its buttresses still smoky in the morning air. Holding my hand, Katherine would turn as if to speak, but instead I trembled as she came close, touching my lips. With hers.

We were children, but do not dismiss the realities that were, for it was real and true, the weight of lips against mine—the senses, young and alive—and she would say nothing as we would walk; nothing when we returned; nothing when she disappeared.

It was then that the summer of my life would begin, and then that it would be fated to expire, for after that cold summer morning, Katherine was gone—her family leaving for someplace beyond Ithaca proper.

—Eurymachus, February 15, 2003