Bubbles

There are certain moments that I want to float above, or watch through a pane of thick glass. The morning that we met is one of those. Neither one of us remembers it now. When we talk about it, over coffee, once every year or so, we search ourselves to see if we can find some hidden meaning in the biscotti, in the sun soaked patio, washed clean by morning rain. I remember an ash tree, its leaves veined and weathered, weeping on the sidewalk.

“You’re acting strange,” you said, not as a warning, but as an observation, as if we’d known each other for years, been to concert halls to listen to Schubert and Bach, swam from river banks in dappled light, dried on the sandy banks together our bodies nearly touching. Even now, you tell me that I am always getting ahead of myself. You say to me that a trip isn’t about dreaming of swimming in Spanish seas under the cover of the moon, it is about having a healthy income, budgeting for time off, and making hotel reservations months in advance.

I know that you are right. I wake up early in the morning and track plane tickets for early June. I buy a guidebook from the local bookstore and highlight relevant pages. I start listening to podcasts in Spanish, just so I can avoid fish and thank the man who will be sweeping the cobbled streets before the heat of the day. But you see? I have already started to dream again. I can see the backs of his hands, crisscrossed by veins and speckled with hair. He has a faint circle on his finger where a ring used to go. Living in the world takes immense effort. Pulling oneself through a day can feel like a sort of miracle.

I know that you understand, or want to understand why I’m sitting now, looking out the window at the rain. It’s because I don’t remember the day we met or what we talked about. I remember that everything was unwritten then. Steps or pavements clothed in rain. Shhh. Quiet, my love. Listen to the light coming in the window. It sings.