It happened as he sat at a table outside a cafe in a Spanish city, enjoying the sunlight and mild air of a mid-March day, one of those days that blossom as springtime eases its gentle way in. One hand rested on a thigh, the other held the ceramic handle of his coffee cup, fingers stroking its curve absently as his thoughts wandered. The constant movement of passing people, the coming and going of voices in conversation, mostly Spanish, occasionally German or English.
And then he saw her. Diminutive, walking gracefully, talking with friends, her voice mingling with theirs, words dissolving into light peals of laughter. Blue jeans, long black hair, a top that ended an inch above her pants, revealing smooth skin, flat stomach. College age, moving quickly by, her overall look and what he saw of her features so similar to someone he once knew that for a moment he thought it was that long-gone someone, a woman from two decades earlier he hadn't thought about in... he wasn't sure how long. Many months. Possibly years.
She'd entered his existence suddenly on a day like this one, walking by as he sat on concrete steps with friends, their eyes meeting, something about her and the way her glance took him in literally stopping his breath. He saw her again a day or two later, found a way to begin talking to her, and from there time seemed to accelerate, her entering his world so completely that he had trouble imagining how his life could have functioned before she materialized.
When the end came, it arrived suddenly, problems erupting with a ferocity that amazed them both, tensions that had previously seemed trivial suddenly swelling, disrupting communication, turning routines once sweet into thorny, uncomfortable passages that multiplied, until the couple's ability to hold things together collapsed a few short days after the initial trouble.
And then she was out of his life, and it seemed to spin off its axis for a while -- a long while, long enough that friends worried, until he finally, slowly appeared to regain his emotional sea legs and everyone around him breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Years passed, other relationships came and went. He married, divorced, changed careers. And he moved through it all as one does: getting up in the morning, carrying on day-to-day life, always moving ahead in time, the passing days' events slipping by, fading, becoming distant in memory, along with all the people who come and go in one's life, growing less substantial with time until they become nothing more than flickering memories, stories one tells to friends.
He moved through it all, believing he was fine, until this passing moment at this table in this foreign city, when the seeming appearance of someone from his past ripped the cover off something deep inside him, and ballooning emotions left him disoriented, feeling an ache he hadn't allowed himself to experience in a long while. By the time he'd collected himself, the woman was gone, replaced by other passing people, other voices speaking a language not his own.
He sat for a while, unsure what to do with himself, feeling alone and hollow in a way he hadn't in many years -- nearly two decades worth, in fact. His body eventually took over, hands pulling money from his pocket for the bill, legs getting him unsteadily up from the table, feet taking him down the sidewalk, away from there. He simply kept moving, his body mixing with the countless others in the city center until he finally disappeared. Just one more mote of dust swirling in spring sunshine. Glowing for a brief moment in the afternoon light, then gone.
España, te quiero.
rws 2:49 PM [+]
