The last, loveliest smile of Lady Autumn!

I breathe.

Therefore I write.

I write.

Therefore I breathe.

Love,

★★★

Once in an autumn…

At the evening hours…

There was a sweet breeze in the air…

The sun set and people were returning to their homes with the hope to find a gentle peace after their strenuous days.

All was calm…

I stepped onto a bus…

It wasn’t too crowded…

As there were no single, empty seats; I sat on the window side of

a two-person seat…

The bus moved…

A little while later, it stopped in a bus stop…

Like that, I saw her for the first time…

On her head there was an elegant hat…

Above a well-cut, mustard colored skirt and jacket…

“Autumn” I said to myself…

Sweet, as if she were a peaceful autumn leaf…

Her bag, her shoes, her accessories, how they all matched…

Her stance, her velvety look…

Her lips were ready to smile in each moment…

Her perfect eyes…

Not having a bus card, she asked if she could pay money…

When the bus driver said that it was card-only, I understood from the

expression on her face that she couldn’t use the bus…

It was as if it was the first time in her life boarding on a bus…

While she thanked the bus driver and tried to step off the bus, I called out…

“You can use my card”…

She turned and gave me a look…

I ran over to her and pressed the card to the machine…

Like that she was surprised, and although she didn’t know what she was

going to say, she came and sat down next to me…

She thanked me, wanting to give me money but I wouldn’t accept it.

She didn’t persist…

She had a manner about her, as if she didn’t want to annoy anyone around her…

Later…

She pulled a book from her purse…

Charles Baudelaire…

“The Flowers of Evil…”

A book of poetry…

She opened to a random page…

She came across the page that had the poem, “To She Who Is Too Gay”...

As if her eyes were caressing the words she began to read…

As if the gentle lines of her face were a cloud…

A cloud as pure white as cotton…

Suddenly she turned to me, asking, “Do you like it?”…

“Very much” I replied, continuing to recite the first stanza of the

poem from my memory…

“This posture of yours, with this gaze… like a green countryside you were beautiful, you laughed like a light breeze, blowing lightly in the air...”

She smiled…

We probably came closer to her stop…

Before she got to her feet, she turned and said that she wanted to

give the book to me…

I blushed…

But with a sociable smile she held my hands and placed the book into my palms…

Baudelaire would love you just at least as much as me, I am sure of

this she said…

In a state of surprise I watched her step off the bus…

I don’t remember if I thanked her or not…

★★★

I saw her again…

But this time it wasn’t on the bus…

My friend from work had lost her mother…

A sudden loss and I certainly didn’t want to leave my friend alone…

Together we wished her mother luck on her last journey…

My friend wanted to stay with her mother privately for a while…

I knowingly decided to stand in the back…

When I was scanning the surroundings…

I saw that someone nearby was being wished well on someone’s last journey…

Two gentlemen were standing near another grave…

With a solemn silence, quietness, they were leaving roses on the grave…

It was obvious that the person in the grave was a woman that they were wishing well…

As two men were passing I saw her face again in their jacket lapel…

With the same stillness, she was smiling in the photograph…

For a moment it felt like I had lost a close friend that I had known for years…

A friend that I had known very, very well…

A friend…

A fellow traveler…

It had not been a very long time that we had not seen each other…

Because I was still carrying the book of poetry that she had given to me…

I went to her side…

The roses on her grave seemed to describe her…

Slim…

Delicate…

Elegant…

I thanked her…

I wished her to rest in peace…

Later…

Baudelaire and I…

Though we never knew her name or her identity, we said

goodbye to that flowering smile that won our admiration from afar then,

we left...

She was a soul, who is gone but not forgotten...

As if she were an autumn leaf that drifted to the ground as it fell down

from the branch…

We never knew each other…

But it was as if our spirits and our hearts were close for a very long time…

Truly…

Have you lost someone that you didn’t know?

★★★