I take my coffee black and my sweaters long sleeved, and I walk on weekends down the market lane, with tender hope of seeing her. Today I did.
Now I'm a man of 45, but don't think for one second that I don't remember the way her tiny vein-lined hand grasped my 18 year old shoulder, the way she laughed at how I tensed up, from too much love, or harder memories. I loved the way she laughed, and I shuddered when I heard it as she stood over by the craft stall with a crochet blue scarf wrapped around those same hands. She had grown 42 from years apart, birthday last week, and I'd sat alone and thought of her all day.
I never quite recovered from our three year adolescent romance. It felt more like an Earthquake. I walked through bustling noon-washed streets and traced her soft blonde hair and lithe frame, and I swear I almost felt it on my fingertips again. I should probably have forgotten about her by now, but nobody forgets Earthquakes.
The pavements were lined with people desperately trying to drown her out but she's burnt into my eyes now, and I felt like kicking myself for remembering when I burnt every picture of her in stolen *****. I hated her for about ten minutes. Now I'm 45 and seeing her again has latched a youthful taste in my mouth, and the vivid memory of stained pink cigarette papers from her red lips rolled over me like a tide. I gave up smoking five years ago, I wonder if she ever did. For a moment I lost her in the haze but she was sat in a café alone, looking like she needed someone.
I thought briefly about sitting beside her and waiting for her eyes to meet mine and glaze over with tears at being reunited with me. And I thought about how she'd tell me how she's been so lonely, and she missed my lips pressed against her neck as if there was a part missing when they weren't. I watched her, and she looked alone. But oh God, she's beautiful.
The way she sat there lit a bliss inside of me. I watched her, and melted into her mulling gaze, her lips fell open lazily as she observed what was left of the early afternoon rush hour crowds. I decided to sit across the room, just close enough to see the colour in her eyes. I thought some more about how happy she'd be to see me again, leaping out of her seat to greet me, her paper-thin frame clutching to my fleshy torso, and we'd breathe in our scents like we always did. My mind even wandered briefly to her nakedness, protected by bed sheets, as we writhed around beneath them. Her girlish ******* hovering above me, black pupils swelling with unadulterated want. That's what we were like back then. She had no intention of settling down with me, we only squeezed every last bit of adventure out of each other. I found myself continuing to envision her smile entwined with my smile, swallowing down the memory of our bitter, painful departure. I pretended that the last time I saw her wasn't when she slammed her front door in my face, tears blistering her cheeks. I've been pretending for so long, it's like it didn't happen after all.
I observed her all the while, high cheekboned face softly highlighted by the pastel sky of spring outside. This was a quiet café, and I could hear the light tapping of her high heeled foot against the chair leg. She bent down to pick up her handbag and retrieved a pack of blue Mayfair cigarettes and placed them on the table- I suppose that answered my previous question. She sighed heavily, and it then occurred to me that she might be waiting for someone. A friend perhaps, or her sister who always hated me. I'd been watching her for a full ten minutes when her eyes finally met mine. My heart shuddered in its cage and my blood was flowing at such a speed that I didn't notice at first that she wasn't staring at me at all. No, she simply skimmed over me, pupils flickering rapidly, her brain registering me as just another face in the crowd. When I finally noticed this, it was like something inside me had shrivelled up and died. All the hopeful lust, all those years of being consumed by her, I'd been waiting all along for a dull glance. I looked down, and watched my beating heart slide pathetically to the floor and wilt there.
When I looked up again, I was greeted by the image of her standing to greet a family of two. A man, around my age, tall and skinny with greying hair and thick-rimmed glasses. I watched her slender arms wrap around him, then their lips lock in a disgusting embrace. I couldn't stop the ******* tears from flowing. I looked down again and my heart was having a seizure on the floor, blood oozing from each exhausted vein.
I paused when I heard the dulcet laughter of the second person.
A young girl stood, skinny and blonde and heavenly, pale blue eyes gleaming like springtides. With each giggle my mind ached with the image of her mother, spinning in endless circles, her blonde hair wrapping around her neck, and that same laughter in the air. I almost choked when I saw that girl. My eyes exchanged desperate looks between mother and the daughter, the embodiment of whom I loved. With each arduous second my throbbing heartbeat became louder and louder, overshadowing the noise of the customers asking me if I was okay. And she had noticed me too. This time, her eyes met mine with recognition, and her perfect face twisted into an expression of sorrow. She began walking towards me, my whole face turned numb.
''Sir, are you alright?'' The soft delicacy in her voice rattled my skull and erupted in my brain. I rolled my head back and forth on my folded arms, and my resounding breath caught up in my woollen sleeves drowned out any other sound that wasn't her voice. ''What's your name?'' She asked me. I lifted my head in a daze, and let the wave of blistering unhappiness wash over, and finally crash behind me. The only thing I saw was her daughter. Terrifyingly beautiful, as if the woman stood by my side was sixteen again, and peering at me with total, innocent obliviousness. She was her double. A cut-out photograph gazing at me. And we stared at each other for a while. She was everything to me, and I was nobody.
''I'm nobody.'' I responded weakly. ''Absolutely nobody.''I'm still trying to decide whether I'm satisfied with this, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I spent an excruciating amount of time trying to decide whether to write this in the format of a letter to the ''woman'' or addressed to some kind of external person(s). Anyway.
This work were submitted for a project in Philippine Literature