Madison Sleepwalk

I’m holding a candle. When I open the door, although there’s no breeze, it begins to flutter, casting odd shadows on the wall as I descend the stairs to the basement, but it burns well enough to blunt the darkness as I step down into it.

Nearing the bottom, I can see someone’s standing there, dressed in a white mu‘umu‘u, and suddenly I know you, catch my breath, startled by the recognition. You’re even wearing the same lei I gave you last.

How could you be here at all? Suddenly you reach for me. Startled, I stumble backward, slip and fall, see the flame go out as everything turns black.

I don’t how much later, but I come to on the cement floor, see through a small window that the sun has risen, and I know that you’re gone, feel how you’ve left only emptiness.

It was just as before, how you came, then disappeared quickly, although you taught me more in that brief time than I’ve ever learned, I think, in the rest of my life.

I will not forget that night or you, ever. Death could never take your worth from me.