"I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and somehow survives...Paradox and bedrock."-Edward Abbey

21 July 2012

Read Backflash

It's been a long time since someone looked at me like that; her pale blue eyes moving side to side, as if reading a book. The facial features were similar and her hair, though spun-gold honey blond, was just as curly. When we made eye contact, I found myself taken back to that one summer, that one month. I confess to conflicted emotions, but perhaps that has to do with something that was said into the either recently and then was attempted to be erased.

Really think I wouldn't see? I do not forget these things. One should know better.

There was the bittersweetness; remembering the afternoons in the French restaurant over mussels or that night when Lovecraft was read in the manner of a lullaby. There was the resentment; remembering how it ended confusingly, the asinine French-film complicated games, which were played in the after-ash. There was the acceptance; knowing that one month was quite wonderful, but, it would seem, that was all that was to be allotted, and where I am now is light years-geographically and mentally-from where I was that one summer.

The interaction lasted but a heartbeat, and she was gone, leaving me with memories and a dysfunctional tale to tell. It was queer being looked at like that again; her pale blue moving side to side as if reading a book. In the after-ash, I find myself left one lingering question; what exactly was she reading as she looked at me?

5 comments:

  1. the allotted time sounds, well cold but that is it isn't it, allotted. and the acceptance after as you say. and it does make one ask.

    but the memories of mussels and a reading
    or dives on a back road and mornings at a local
    diner where people really thought you were a couple, we carry sometimes hold as the moment is now.

    the breath of a month or two years can only be held so long, then the exhale is the reward.

    this brings back lots Robbie. this tale is not so dysfunctional. we can fill in the blanks i am sure with our own history.

    good write.

    ~robert

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  2. I really enjoyed this Robbie, you said and hinted at so much in so few words. I have often wondered what some people from my past were reading when they looked into my eyes intently. I guess I'll never know but the memory can be disconcerting.

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    1. Thank you. Disconcerting is an apt term, I think.

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  3. I have an associate, Jacob, whose eyes move back and forth like that due to a tic. Very unnerving when you first meet him. Makes me paranoid that I've got a booger or something.

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    1. This is only the second time I've ever seen someone look at someone else like that, and it is...strange.

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