Over the hill, past his prime and facing the end of his inning and yet the thirst of his heart's desire would not diminish. Seeking her presence; the one he met and missed sixty some years ago when the nature had lit the youthful fire. Memories of her lovely curves; dark eyes, inviting glances, parted lips and stolen kisses; including the maiden one, remained buried in his heart like king's treasures.
A shooting star; a flash in the sky, she came and was gone out of his life just in one summer, never to be seen or heard. With the captured image in his heart, he lived on with hope that sooner or later she would return, but that did not happen. As the years rolled, his life passed like the drifting wood in the rapid river, getting snagged here and there, then moving again without any purpose. Just floating and passing the towns and the cities as he was progressing in that aimless travel.

All that was stored in the labyrinth of his mind for all those years is the youthful face of twenty and some years. For the past seven decades he carried her entire persona, the gentle waves, surfing on the waters; the moonlight beach and the strumming of the guitar, the soft and love filled melodies floating in the air from her lips to his heart. All remained intact, nothing decaying nor her body aging as the time rolled. His life passed as it must, with someone he only physically knew; not like the maiden residing in his heart. Carrying out his householder's duties faithfully, he rode with the time but not ever forsaking the ardent love for the one his heart desired a long time ago.

An old man in his nineties, oft in solitary and in pensive moods, he sat sipping whiskey and soda, remembering her charms and looks as if she was there with him; he in his prime, like the famous Dorian Gray and her, the daughter of Zeus, from the Xanadu . His mind locked in the past, it never occurred to him that like himself, now she must also be aged. His soul wouldn't accept that her comely face and curvaceous bosom, all replaced by the cruel time with wrinkles and layers of unsightly bulges. The ravages wrought by the bygone years on the human body, in his mind, had spared the woman he loved and lost.

To his faltering heart and fading memories, nothing else remain as vivid and alive as her image and it was the paradise anon, whenever she visited him in that love's shrine he had built with his own hand; a Taj Mahal. For him, nothing else had survived to give him comforts or fresh memories. Family and friends moved onto their own paths. Amidst the geriatric crowd that surrounded him in the Nursing Center, he remained an outsider; communicating very little as if in a deep depression. For the staff and the peers he was unsociable, loner with all hopes gone; waiting for the equalizer who comes for all who are born.

No one knew how in those solitary moments she became live in his arms. There he lay with his eyes closed in the cool sand of the Mediterranean beach next to her; caressing her, holding her to his bosom. Those memories keeping the dying embers of his fading life all lit up like the carnival of Mardi Grass. The dream world he lived counting and cherishing the moments of the brief paradise he had. She was with him there in his mind's eye until he becomes one with her when he breathed his last.