Nine And A Half Weeks

They sit, side by side on a bench, alone in a park, in the deepening evening light, on a warm August night, talking. Even months later she remembers everything about that moment. She wishes she could forget. They talk about his accident, examine the jagged cut on his shin. She is glad he is alright, and smiling shyly, tells him so. She shows him the scar on her knee, barely visible now more than 20 years after racing down a hill on the back of her tricycle, away from her grandfather, then tumbling onto the concrete, in the same park in which they now sat. Her grandfather is gone and the scar faded but in that instant she is six years old again. He looks at her, then reaches out and gently, tenderly traces the scar with a fingertip. She feels his touch like a burn. Feels it still. The memory makes her throat ache. How much time, she wonders, for this wound to heal?