Dragonfly by Jaxn Hill

We still had miles to go to get back to our neighborhood. We threw away the remnants of our picnic and packed up what was left over so it was easy to carry. As we started to walk away, a young woman came up to Torstein and said, “In your story, the woman had a family to lavish her love on in her last year. What if she’d had no one?”

Torstein said, “No one has no one. If she’d been single, she could have lavished her love on kids like Sully, or people in the old folks home, or AIDS babies in Africa.”

“So you think the only way to die, knowing you’ve really lived, is volunteerism?” She was walking along with us now, and she sounded kind of mad.

Torstein offered her some sunflower seeds. “No,” he said. “I think that the only way to judge if you’ve really lived, before you die, is to ask if you’ve really loved. Not if anyone else loved you, not if you loved anyone else, even, but if you loved ... everyone.”

“Everyone?! How can you love everyone?”

“You start with loving the people closest to you, and work out from there.”

We were reaching the edge of the city block that the park ran along. We’d be crossing the next major street in just a few steps.

“If you’re dying to live, why don’t you come along with us and figure it out?” Torstein asked.

She stopped now at the edge of the street. The signal light would tell us to walk in just a few seconds. Would she come?

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To the city. You’d be welcome.”

“You’re walking?”

“Yes, it’s just a few more miles. We might be there by nightfall.”

She had taken a handful of sunflower seeds from the sack, but she hadn’t put any in her mouth. Now she stood there holding them, looking at Torstein in his green jacket with his sparkling eyes. Clearly she could be happy with us. The light was signaling for us to go, and we’d all started out into the street. Only Torstein lingered with her, and then he started to waltz out into the crosswalk, doing that mincing dance that always made me laugh. I don’t know if it was the best choice at that moment, because it did make him look a bit like a lunatic, and this woman had been on the fence anyway.

She stayed on the sidewalk and watched him go. Then the light said “Don’t Walk,” and she obeyed. The last we saw of her, she was standing on the corner with her fist clenched around a few sunflower seeds she hadn’t eaten.