Men
invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even
while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
-Jorge
Luis Borges
I had been drawn to
her legs by the burgundy jodhpurs she was wearing, and the slowness with which
she had tied up her hair after sitting down was rather therapeutic to watch, as
well as beautiful. Her thick hair was the colour of wet sand and the sun had turned its curled tips to caramel. The clothing she had on was simple
and unaffected and very pretty. There was small a dimple underlining her left
eye that I supposed would grow larger when she smiled. Whoever was wearing the
kind of women’s perfume I liked most of all had temporarily forfeited ownership
of that scent to her. At each red light I would lurch a little further out of
my seat towards her. The distance I was trying to bridge did not feel as
unbridgeable as it should have between two strangers on a crowded morning tram,
even though I never saw her look my way.
My stop was approaching.
As I scrolled through the playlists on my I-pod, I thought of every possible
pretext on which to speak with her but could settle on none. How could I be
both polite and propositional in the few seconds between the doors opening and
closing? I decided that I could not be. A scene from a film I had seen that
week then entered my mind: a man and woman are waiting on the train station
platform and the wind is blowing. Giddied by the woman’s beauty, the man loses
grip of some of his work papers; one of them is swept right into the woman’s
face. As he peels it off her apologetically, the man finds that a perfect red
kiss from the woman’s lips has been imprinted onto his boring file – his heart
is set aflutter. I sank back into my seat and looked at the toothpaste blots on
my jeans. I could smell my own unwashed hair and it was comforting. Then the
old man beside me stood and pulled the cord; it was also time for me to get
out, I realised. I started the playlist entitled ambient space travel 3 at an arbitrary point, shifted my knees to
let the old man out and then followed him towards the front exit.
Before the tram came
to a halt, I decided to pay her one last glance because I would never again be
so near to her. But when I turned my head I saw that she was not sitting down
but standing right behind me, also waiting to get out. I considered moving
aside chivalrously to let her alight first, but there was not space enough; she
would have had to squeeze awkwardly past. And so I did nothing. I stepped out
routinely and crossed over onto Grattan Street. Thinking only of her and the
fact that she was not evanescent, that I could stop and let her catch me up at
any time, I quickened the pace at which I was walking and turned up the volume
of ambient space travel 3 – the track
playing was called flux and mutability.
I held my breath past the hoards of gowned smokers standing in front of the
Royal Melbourne Hospital, dodged the outbound traffic on Royal Parade so that I
was on the traffic island in the middle.
The crossing light was
taking a long time to change. Meanwhile a few more people had played chicken and
won; their reward was to be with me on the tiny island. She was one of them.
-Late for a lecture?
I took off my
headphones and set them around my neck. I was surprised to hear how badly the
sound bled – the airy harmonies of the synthesiser pads were louder than the
idling cars.
-Actually, I don’t
have lectures.
-Lucky!
-I’m a fourth year
student.
-In?
-Bio…
-logy?
-Ethics. Philosophy.
She laughed and with
her dimple enlarged said that she studied architecture and that that sort of
stuff was too mind-blowing for her. Only then did I notice that she spoke with
an accent. I had begun to talk about an uncle of mine who was an architect when
the light changed. We crossed together. On the other side, we stopped and stood
at the point where Royal Parade and Grattan Street intersected, where the university
abutted the pavement in the shape of an arrow pointing away.
-So where are you
going?
-This way. Where are
you going?
-That way.
I know that if we were
to exchange numbers, then I would have to instigate the exchange. I did not.
Instead, I wished her a lovely day and goodbye and she repaid me in kind. The last memory I
have is of of her letting her hair down in the distance, near
the music auditorium.
Was it cowardice – that
deprived me of her? Or was I waiting, if not for the Disneyfied ‘right’ moment,
then at least for a moment that was righter?
I am not so sure. All I know is
that I have been sick with loneliness and regret ever since and hope that in
one lifetime or another that righter moment will come along and I will feel
better.
Earth
is calling but Marcel waits
with
bated breath for the moon
rover
to return with his breakfast
and
the morning paper he wrote
himself
while in the thrall of a comet’s
act
of dying – in fact, all sorts
of
those wild explosions you can expect
to
see when you’re the only pyro-
-technician
in the cosmos – so
earth
writes a letter and it says, Marcel,
I
must apologise for my problems
with
gravity – I know both kinds
are
required to keep you happy or,
at
least, living – but I promise now
that
it’s all systems go – just read
your
own article on page four to see
how
accommodating I’ve become –
your
hopeful habitat, earth.
^
I am
calling but one of your mates
answers,
tells me you have just opened up
your
arm with a house key, fitfully
laughing
as after a NOS bomb –
blaming
our mum and dad – so
I
drive over to Justin’s place and see
port-coloured
spills on the brown
rental
home carpet, next to a coffee table
strewn
with bluish mushrooms and loose
baccy
and rolling paper – an old Element
shirt
of mine wrapped round your arm –
-how passive
you seem now, so calmly
interstellar
and how sober the voice of the lady
paramedic
when she says come back to us
compared
to my manic come back down!
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