Tak-a-ta, tak-a-ta, tak-a-ta. The wind battered flag tapped out a rhythm into the air, inviting me to dance.
Yes, I’d play.
I’d seen this scene so many times, but never like this.
And I needed something to put the smile back into my heart and the warmth into this cold, cold day.
From the time I landed in England, she seemed determined to take my love away.
Like the disillusioned lover who deep down thinks, “If you only knew the real me, you would not love me,” Cornwall put on her naughty face.
I was hungry, tired, and dehydrated, so I wasn’t in the mood. I didn’t find her misty spit amusing.
But greater than my irritation was my desire to love her the way I always had. To dance the way we always had.
I once thought her scattered blossoms were natural and wild. I now knew them to be cultivated beauty.
As I stared into the shy flowers growing out of a tiny crack, I contemplated the spirit of the person who would put it there.
And the fierce wind the flower had to withstand to show its face.
Seeing past her masks and savoring her savagery made her all the more pleasing.
If I thought I couldn’t love her more, miss her more, I was mistaken.
The noise, wind, cold, and grey only created a backdrop for me to see her beauty more clearly.
And I stood there hopelessly enthralled anew. This time even more deeply snared.
For now I’ve seen her whole face.