August 12, 2011

• Just think

  “Well, it was good running into you,” Alisha said with a smile.
  “Yeah, we’ll stay in touch,” I affirmed with a confident nod.
  “Oh,” she murmured.  She seemed distraught, perhaps even a bit confused.  “Why—I mean, what do you mean?”
  “You know, stay in communication, write to you….things like that.” I was a bit lost as I tried to explain the familiar concept.
  “But you’re really going to do that?” she cried with a determined emphasis.
  “….Yes,” I said, tilting my head forward, a bit skeptical now.
  “Really? You are going to write to me?”
  “Yeah, I mean, it’s possible…”
  “Possible?”
  The note of uncertainty she played hung in the air between us.  We were standing on a walkway by a sward on our university campus.  I bit my lip.
  “Ok,” I relented with a heavy sigh. ”I’m not going to stay in touch. I actually said that without meaning it.”
  “Phew,” she breathed in immediate relief as she shifted her weight.  Her eyes moved about to grease themselves again.
  “So I guess this is just goodbye, then,” I reflected aloud.
  “Yeah,” she croaked in the sudden morose realization. She flushed from head-to-toe with the thought of eternal departure.  I looked at her, at her downcast eyes, and I was overcome with the moment as well.  This was it for us.  Alisha, the girl I had known in Mr. Carson’s junior creative writing class for one semester in high school three years ago, was about to exit my life forever.  The tension suddenly exploded, and with the passion of a 1950s musical she flung her arms around me and began sobbing.  The dam broke for me as well and we cried over all the good times we had never had.
  “I’m going to miss you,” she wailed.
  “I’ll miss you, too,” I choked through my tears.
  “Really?” she said, sniffling hard.
  “No,” I said with a wistful sigh as I looked over her shoulder. 
  She pulled back from the hug.  “Yeah,” she nodded.  “But just think,” she went on, looking over my shoulder at a display of lives we had never lead.  “Just think if we had been closer.”
  “That would have been great,” I said. 
  “Yeah.”
  She shuffled her feet and looked at the ground as she rubbed the tears from her cheek.  I sniffled a few times and wiped my cheek as well.
  “Well,” she heaved, still in recovery.
  “Some other life?” I said emotionally.
  “Yeah,” she whimpered. “Some other life.”  She finished with a smile of agreement.
  With that we nodded curtly at one another and walked on in the direction of our actual lives, as the puddle our tears had formed quickly evaporated. 

  • 7:20 pm
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