memories of a fair past

Come springtime and this small town will be the annual fair.
It is Winter though and I stand here remembering the past. 
Twelve years since I passed this way and longer since... 
well, since her... a memory of my past who blew back into my life 
like this cold Winter wind that now blasts around me.

We met here long ago.  She was passing through with the fair, 
a real life carny or so she claimed at the time.  I could see more than that in her eyes.  
Like me, she was a dreamer.  She had hopes beyond her current role taking tickets 
for people to throw baseball at milk bottles.  Dreams beyond the side shows 
that I recall seeing at a carnival out west when I was too young to appreciate them.

Somehow the conversation became something else.  
It became a week where she saw how the other half lived.  
Where I had a companion even that Doctor fellow would envy.  
There was a certain magic to it, a magic that went beyond 
fun house mirrors and perhaps into territory that it shouldn't have.  
Have you heard the stories?  Once upon a darker time, 
those carny girls and boys were joined in arranged marriages.

Today, as the Winter wind brushes against my waistcoast.   
I am here to fulfill a promise.  The wind is silent.   
It is this that allows me to know she is over my shoulder.   
In her hand, a cup of hot tea for her, hot coffee for me. 
Both blackened for their respective reasons...
and as bittersweet as respective memories of the past.

Her hair still smells of cinnamon.  
I still remember as she does. 
This may be the last time I see her. 
We toast to a fair of the past.