Lost Lady

‘Excuse me.’ She sat on a low garden wall with her shopping bag. The voice was as fragile as the rest of her. ‘Do you know where we are? I’ve forgotten.’

I waved a hand. ‘Do you recognise any of this?’

She shook her head, then raised her own thin, blue-veined hand against the sun. ‘I say, isn’t that a beautiful rose!’

The creamy white bloom was tinged with crimson, a floral menstruation. ‘Yes, and just down the road there’s a bush of lavender. I love watching the bees, especially the bumble bees, buzzing and bobbing from flower to flower.’

‘I can see,’ she said, ‘you haven’t lost your sense of wonder. You must be a happy man.’

I shook my head too. ‘The more you think and see and feel, the more you can get hurt.’

‘All the same, talking to you has made me feel so much better!’

I smiled. ‘Me too.’

The trouble with conversations is that you easily forget what started them.