Now

Now

I remember the color of your honey-golden hair and your shimmering eyes from the first time we met. As you stood on the window balcony adjacent of mine, the sun braiding its golden tinsels down through your locks, we had our very first chat. You were worried that perhaps your new life in the bustling city would be too much for you. I had laughed and asked you for your name. Your name was Edith then. But now you have coarse auburn hair messily gelled into place, and your name is Theo.

We sit upon a grassy hill overlooking bridges and roads and people walking through and through. We sit there, the cold gales of the coming winter riding on autumn leaves briskly brushing by your curled up body. Blades of grass tickle our ankles as the sun dimmed ever so slightly behind the onyx bridge cables. I sat in silence next to you, quiet and in your lonesome, eyes looking raw and still moist, framed by your limp shoulders and fragile build. A stack of homework weighs down my backpack, and I hear my phone buzz with a message from my manager, but neither matter. Eighteen years we had been in this lifetime, and nine years our paths had once again intertwined. And in that half of a lifetime, I knew what it meant when your hands were placed on your cheeks and you had barely even noticed my presence. Glancing around with your shaking eyes, you blink every so often to reassure that the feeling in them is just the draft.

Held in my hands is your favorite drink, and after a few seconds, I clear my throat.

“Here.” It was apparent you were deep in thought, taking another second to pull away from it and direct your eyes towards the cup nestled between my fingers. Tentatively, you look straight into my eyes in the way that makes my spine shake and fingers fall limp, like a hurt animal.

“But don’t you need that for bus fare?” is the first thing you murmur, hands dropping into the grass now, but still not broaching the notion that I had something for you.

Indignantly, I extend the still-warm drink towards you, “Well I already bought it, so here it is.” Locking eyes with you once more, I make one even blink before pointing insistent daggers at you in the way that made it hard for you to refuse whatever gifts I had for you. Before you can even draw another breath in protest, I hastily add in, “It’s Friday, so I can just walk home or something, I’ll be alright!”

In this life you love chai with just the slightest pinches of cinnamon. In the previous you adored earl grey with vanilla so rich I sometimes wondered what the point of finding the highest quality of tea would come to accomplish if it only tasted like vanilla. It’s a shame that such tea is so difficult to find like how we remember it, too. Sometimes I want to tell you, did you know that the earl grey from our past lives was toxic? I wonder if that was why you were so weak and tired when we last met in that life. If you like that kind of earl grey in your next, I’ll be sure to warn you.

Different lives we’ve lived, with the contours of different faces, personalities, circumstances, eras. No matter how our voices changed and will change, no matter the hue of our skin, hair, and eyes, there are only two constants. No matter what worldly trifles between nations in strife, classes rebelling, rights being explored and people being slaughtered, we will always, always meet one another.

Agápe, éros, philía, and storgē, the Greeks had four different words for love, but I don’t think any could come close to defining what I feel. Friendship is a word too common in these times, and love is too dull. But that’s the happy part, overshadowed by how I always remember and you always forget.

Always, I yearn to tell you, let my mouth run dry with all the things I must say. But perhaps one life of troubles is enough for you, and I purse my lips tight. I phase back into the reality of you holding the cup with shaking hands. Holding you tightly, my arms wrap around you, the chill of your skin as evident as ever.

“I thought for sure that I would get the job...”

Sympathetically, I smile towards you, as I let go of the hug and idle my fingers with parting your windswept locks back into place.

“I really...I just thought I’d be good enough this time.” More defeated than angry, you lean against me, still lost in thought, as I placed your hands in mine, and smile once more.

“Well if you want to talk about it...” And you comply, your eyes gleaming bright for a second before you let it all out.

Sometimes I wait for the lifetime in which you too will remember all the timelines. All the world’s troubles from centuries of life spent remembering. But for now we sit together on the windswept hill, overlooking the bustling bridge as we lean against one another. And for now this moment is fine.

  

Image is mine.