No River In Between

“A statue stands between us,

It’s a dream she said to me,

It’s a dream the statue repeated,

Sanity eludes you my friend,

Voices in my head sanctify my efforts,

But you will always be alone…

The voices said.”

That short poem floated on the edge of the river. Robert dropped another poem and another piece of paper from his journal. He didn’t shed a single tear, that day wasn’t a sad day. He was still lonely and for the most part miserable yet that day he decided to start over and that gave him a newfound happiness. He could see the pages float away from him. The memories of imagined lovers were fading away on the other side of the river. His mind had constructed fantasies on top of fantasies creating a mountain of illusions that were washed away by the river. From afar an owl looked at the delirious man, ripping page after page of his journal. So many dreams were sailing away in poorly constructed paper boats.

A woman from the other side dared to cross the river. She was the most persistent of his dreams. He looks at the page he was about to rip and on the top of the page her name was written in hard to read cursive. Madelyn… that was her name, she was daringly crossing the river towards him. The last attempt of a beloved memory to stay alive but he rips the page and she gets washed away with the paper.

The owl flies over Robert and lands on the other side of the river. Robert stopped and looked at the owl for a couple of seconds. After a subtle exchange of stares with the owl, Robert finished ripping the last page of his journal. As it falls into the river the owl once again flies over Robert. This time the owl flew over him circled the area and then dove into the water. The bird then emerged from the river with what appeared to be a journal in his claws. The owl then dropped the journal right in front of Robert.

As he looked around to try to find his memories the owl places himself behind Robert. He grabbed the journal dropped by the owl. The journal was virtually an exact copy of the one he just ripped apart. The owl turned into a woman with long wavy black hair. She was kneeling down behind Robert and as he turned around to see what was behind him the woman gently touched his face. The woman amazed Robert. She was completely naked. He didn’t know what to do. They both looked straight in the eyes for almost five minutes. Then she extended her arms into the sky and turned into an owl and flew back to the tree from which it was originally watching Robert.

In a burst of insanity Robert screams to the top of his lungs. There was no way he could escape the pages of his journal. He was delirious and the happiness turned into despair and soon into paranoia. The owl was looking from afar and the memories haunted him now more than ever. There was no way they would leave him. In the distance he could hear the convoy assembled to find him. He was going to start a new life but the memories would be right there with him, haunting him, with no river in between. They find him in the river, trying to drown in the shallow waters with his journal next to him. As the police take him away Robert tries to look around for the owl but couldn’t find it. The women on the other side of the river faded away as the owl flew over them and disappeared in the now clear sky.