Curiosity. This gift from God that seemed to get us into so much trouble.
I’m full of it. Closed eyes, picturing her, picturing the lines, picturing the smile. It’s a kerosene heater in a cabin in the middle of a winter full of broken power lines. I want to know more, want to find out something, want to fill my wonder with answers to these weird little questions.
But I can’t find or see her.
Silence, this strange solace you want in the noise and hate in the echoes. The steps on the sidewalks you notice. The slide of the door to open up to strangers that don’t see you in the first place. The wind blowing and making you cold even though you shouldn’t feel the chill anymore right?
I look and wait. Watch and stay. I glance and gaze and keep the stare scanning this place I never noticed.
We watch when there’s something we want don’t we?
Stuck, staring out, these still lifes begging to be bought and set free.
Wanted and wishing to be found, arrived at, door opened and hugged with love. The always coming into your afternoon. With that smile. That smile that reflects the sky and tells you it won’t ever leave.
I wonder if she was some kind of dream. A grim afterlife fantasy. Was it all imagined? Or simply too good to be true.
The streets and the stone and the sidewalks and the hanging lights surrounding us all hang like a painting on a wall staring you down day after day. Keeping you prisoner. Telling you—daring you to make that U-turn. But you just keep going keep walking keep breathing until the moment you turn and see a vague figure that might be and could be and possibly should be—
Her.
Stepping through. Opening then closing. And you stand and you stare and you wonder and then you go.
You go because there’s nothing really you can do anymore.
There are no rules here and this is something you can and will and should do.
So you do.