She had lost him once, separated by circumstances their lives had gone in unconnected ways a fading memory of him in the back of her heart still held him close a memory fading like a sepia photograph slipping away into the nothingness she had lost him her first love their lives traveling on different paths many miles apart.
Till one day the man stopping at a distant wayside café happened to pick up an old faded newspaper a newspaper with only a single advertisement showing, a happy smiling face and the man knew as he had been told by his wise grandmother that this happy face would lead him back to his long lost love and so his search began, slinging his drum over his shoulder he set off on the long journey to find his love once again.
Would he find her, would she be traveling alone this he wouldn’t know he would just have to find out
The woman tired sat down her feet sore from walking, all day she had been picking up the discarded cans and assorted rubbish that the tourists just threw out of their car windows, they came for the casino they didn’t care about the land didn’t care about her heritage, they played black jack and poker and bought cheap plastic trinkets from the gift shop, they never saw the beauty of the land but the woman did, she saw the sunsets the tiny wildflowers poking up out of the cracks in the piles of garbage she saw the beauty.
She also saw a shadow fall across her feet and realized that a path had opened up in front of her, a path that would now be shared by not just herself and her memories but with the man in the photograph of her memory, his shadow warming her heart and suddenly springing back to clarity the picture of her long lost love.
And as he placed his drum down beside her and slowly knelt down he said “Will you marry me my long lost love”