Tuesday, August 04, 2009
The harder I tried not to think about her, the more I thought about her, the more impossible it became to explain, I went back to her house, I walked the road between our two neighborhoods with my head down, she wasn't there again, I wanted to call her name, but I didn't want her to hear my voice, all of my desire was based on that one brief exchange, held in the palm of our half hour together were one hundred million arguments, and impossible admissions, and silences. I had so much to ask her, 'Do you like to lie on your stomach and look for things under the ice?' 'Do you like plays?' 'Do you like it when you can hear something before you can see it?' I went again the next day, the walk was exhausting, with each step I further convinced myself that she had thought badly of me, or worse, that she hadn't thought of me at all, I walked with my head bowed, my broad-brimmed cap pushed low, when you hide your face from the world, you can't see the world, and that's why, in the middle of my youth, in the middle of Europe, in between our two villages, on the verge of losing everything, I bumped into something and was knocked to the ground. It took me several breaths to gather myself together, at first I thought I'd walked into a tree, but then that tree became a person, who was also recovering on the ground, and then I saw that it was her, and she saw that it was me, 'Hello,' I said, brushing myself off, 'Hello,' she said. 'This is so funny.' "Yes.' How could it be explained? 'Where are you going?' I asked. 'Just for a walk.' she said, 'and you?' 'Just for a walk.' We helped each other up, she brushed leaves from my hair, I wanted to touch her hair, 'That's not true,' I said, not knowing what the next words out of my mouth would be, but wanting them to be mine, wanting, more than I'd ever wanted anything, to express the center of me and be understood. 'I was walking to see you.' I told her, 'I've come to your house each of the last six days. For some reason I needed to see you again.' She was silent, I had made a fool of myself, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself and she started laughing, laughing harder than I'd ever felt anyone laugh, the laughter brought on tears, and the tears brought on more tears, and then I started laughing, out of the most deep and complete shame, 'I was walking to you,' I said again, as if to push my nose into my own shit, 'because I wanted to see you again,' she laughed and laughed, 'That explains it,' she said when she was able to speak. 'It?' That explains why, each of the last six days, you weren't at your house.' We stopped laughing. I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question. 'Do you like me?'"
