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Leila
John kneels over the stream, places his hand in the water and splashes a little, sending ripples running down the hill. The sun in the distance gives one last glimpse of history and retires under the blanket wonder that mothers us.
There, in the distance, beyond the grassy memories and puffs of cigarette smoke flicker city lights. They do not seem to notice us, but it is difficult to shrug off the foreboding glare.
"Maybe," John mumbles and splashes the stream some more, "maybe it would have been all right if my dad hit me once or twice, you know, for real." To feel something comforting, like justice. Then all this would be fair, the journey and the eluding daybreak.
His tone like mine, melancholy and passive. He does not ask for a response and I give none. I do not know John's history, if he has one. The way the days flow is history is our future now, we are reborn every moment we spend together, the allure of the past diminished by the furtive pull of the next night.
It can all crash and burn and we would still be here. We are perpetually stealing the night for our own use, she does not hinder us nor makes us stronger, but she is ours, if anything ever was.
"It's the woman," I say, feeling equally diminished by the word, a shadow covered in shadows of memories, like giant dunes, strong and vapid, evaporated the instant another breath comes. "If I could hold on to just this one thing," I say looking at the residue of New York, talking to John on the peripheral, hearing him softly crying and do not finish.
"We were strangers, too, once," he says eventually, and sniffing, gets and walks past me, the erect trod of a man who fears nothing weak in himself. He disappears in the thick brush, only his footsteps remain.
It had always been about the woman, I think, only this time, she faded into the same night that hovers here. An unwanted blessing, like the ever-watchful vengeance of a Greek goddess or a harmless stalker, disallowing our mortality from rising above itself.
Lust. Lust and depression and a constant yearning. I think of Leila, sitting on a swing set, the Boston skyline hovering behind us, our shoeless feet dragging the sand. That smell.
John, from the bushes, groans. "Your face, Seth, it's a void staring into a void. You don't close your eyes to dream. Whatever you battle inside there.." he steppes closer to me and knocks on my head, steps in front of frozen eyes like two perfect fossils, bends down and into them, squinting, he says, "I know you see me, I know you see everything here, but looking at you, it's like I am looking at the ghost living in a world where everything is just an exhibition of your ghostly visage, lost amidst the cruelty of yesterday made anew through your eyes." He gently places a hand on my shoulder and softly squeezes and says nothing else.
From somewhere that does not feel like the past, but like a moment constantly recurring in the present, Leila gets off the swings, I watch her lips move, I see the outline of my top lip moving in response. Leila's beautiful eyes, alive and passionate, they make me hungry and diluted, full and hopeless. She grabs the shoes and her bag and walks off, her back turned, only she moves patiently, angelic slowness, the slow step of wanting, of yearning for another chance that does not come. My stomach in knots, I have to strain to prevent from feinting or falling unto my knees like I have done so many times. I stand timeless like a statue, afraid from moving a single muscle lest it betray me.
The me here in the park sees John lingering below on the spoiled grass, a silhouette of a martyr, and I want to reach out but the inner me, whoever drives this vehicle, pauses long enough to freeze again. The past, no longer behind nor in front, merges with my whole being and an invisible tear rolls down my cheek.
"This is how men cry," I whisper, "mercilessly, taught by our mothers, perfected by our lovers," voice hoarse, barely audible to myself. In the tunnel vision of yesterme I see Leila crying too, the way women cry, innocent, strong and dangerous. Her blue silhouette of wonder slipping away into the side streets of Brighton.
John rips up some grass, stands up, with the clump still in his hand and showers it over me. "Wake up," he mildly says, the breath over me like a cloud of fog, vaporizing the vision. The grass slow motion falling, parts of it getting caught in my nostrils and eye. I cough and move, not forward but it's enough.
