That Secret Place

     I used to have a special place.  My own secret place where electricity filled the air and magic was still possible.  I was walking through my neighborhood one day when I stumbled on it.  On the main street that led into the neighborhood, there was a small runoff creek that ran under the road at the bottom of a hill.  I had passed it every time I came home, but I had never noticed it before.  Perhaps that was the magic of this place.  There was a little concrete railing along the side, perfect to sit on and look down at the creek.  Overhead was a tall mimosa tree, the kind with the pink and white thistle-like blooms, casting broken shade over the area.  I didn’t know at the time that it was called a mimosa; I had never seen a tree with blooms like that before.  They were small and fragile, yet beautiful.  The creek was shallow and clear and you could see several flat rocks underneath the surface, like a faerie’s stepping-stones.  On the day I first found this secret place, a dragonfly was flitting lazily along the surface.  I stopped to watch it and was held captivated in the moment.  I knew then that it this would be my own secret place and that, one day, I would bring that special someone to that spot.  I would blindfold them, teasing them, and say, “Follow me if you can.”  I would lead them to that secret place and say, “Here we are.  This is me.  This is my world,” and we would sit there together in that serene little place beside the road in a quiet little neighborhood.  Even though I had never noticed it before when I had passed it in the past, from that point on I would smile every time I passed it on my way home, thinking of the power and magic that place held and shared only with me.  

     However, such things cannot stay.  One day, as I was passing it on my way home, I looked over, and my heart dropped.  The mimosa tree had been cut down.  I came back to that spot that afternoon on a walk to have a better look.  An ugly fresh stump was all that was left of the tree.  The shade it had provided was gone.  The water in the creek was murky and clouded, flowing lazily past the plain brown rocks underneath.  The magic that had once hung in the air like a velvet curtain had dissipated.  I no longer have a special, secret place of my own, save what is left of the memories of it in my mind.  Hopefully, I’ll find another place pollinated with that same magic I felt before.  Maybe then I’ll have somewhere to take that special someone and to share in something that is uniquely my own.  Memories, after all, lose so much when you try to translate them into words.