Jimmy Cliff - Many Rivers To Cross (Lyrics on screen)
https://youtu.be/QvBEpwcGM2o
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She grabbed a bottle of water from her handbag and a tattered journal she had tucked in the side pocket, next to her laptop. The journal was old, with torn corners and ripped pages, but it told a story. The story was about a man she had loved, and probably always would. Something about him was different, unique, and he was always a mystery to her, no matter how much she knew him, she never REALLY knew him. He was her enigma. She had loved him and lost him and had come across the journal during a move. She sat and read its pages and remembered the bittersweet moments she had shared with him.
He had been so very cruel those last days when they were together...
.... But here in the journal, she could read of the love they had. The beautiful day out in the canyon together, or seeing art in the desert. She loved that man more than the world around her, but they had betrayed each other and that love grew stale and cold. She wondered if he ever missed her too...do men ever think back on the women they loved and wonder? Does he ever think of the good times or does he remember her as a regret?
She rested that night, gathered her thoughts, and slept.
The next day, the sun shined down the way it only does in the Caribbean. The hues of color there along the beach line, so bright, so vivid. She put on a colorful linen dress, lightweight and flowing, perfect for the beach. Under it, she wore a bathing suit she had spent too much money on, but it gave her that feeling of "oh so sexy" that every woman desired to feel while in one...she giggled to herself for a moment thinking "we aren't all swimsuit models..."...she gathered a beach towel, a blanket, and that journal, and walked down to the beachside. She sat there, on the pristine sands, with only shells and dried seaweeds to litter the grounds around her...the popped open one of the resort umbrellas stuck in the sand and set up a cozy place to just be.
She watched as boats would come and go from the harbor, and enjoyed the sights and sounds around her. She took pictures with her cell phone now and again and enjoyed rum drinks and steel drum music from the resort behind her. She wondered if the man from the journal ever made it to the island, the place they talked of, if he ever got the dream he wanted...
...what if one of those boats, going out with tourists was his boat, what did name it...he had told her once that he never thought that far ahead, that it was all just a dream of his, that it would never happen. As with many of his plots and stories, she didn't believe that. She knew of dreams and hopes. No matter how grounded in the everyday goings-on, a person thinks of those little details of their someday...their dreams. She would have named their boat "THE ONE" after a song, well a poem, that the man once called theirs.
She realized how much she had missed this man all these years. She stayed on the beach all day that day until the last boat came into the harbor... hoping, that somehow, she would hear a familiar voice coming from one of the fishermen or tourists passing by...
...that's the funny thing about hope...it always lingers.
The woman realized in time, the man was a liar, a cheat, and that she had dodged a bullet. The man was worth nothing, despite the moments her heart longed for with him, once, long ago...and she was happy their paths never crossed again...some dreams, loves, and hopes should stay in the past, stay in the moments they were intended to.
She turned around, picked up her beach stuff, and walked along the beach the opposite, as the man she hoped to see, walked off the dock ...fate had decided that they shouldn't see one another, that the mistakes of the past were too great, and the broken bits were too broken...they both went about their day, never knowing the other one was right there, moments away.
