Lavender

Mar. 5th

At the same time, something changed in both of us.

She glided on one side of the Paseo Del Río, I stood shoegazing on the other, the turbulent green water between us. It rained like an angel's tantrum, heavy and cold, but not bleak, not melancholy.
Her hair flew back, parachuting in the gale and I could almost feel it stretching across the creek and stabbing into my senses. I could feel the perfume, lavender in scent, invading my olfactory, breaking down barricades and drawing my autonomy to its knees.
I was enslaved to her, the change between us occurring in different locations internally. My insides churned inside-out, mushed into one another. I had become a septic tank, withholding my own sludge. She glowed with intensity, her face reflecting the few rain-flecked dabs of sunlight like a golden idol.
The more my heart beat excitedly, the more it sunk into it's own cavity, shrinking in anguish. The more my eyes grew wide, the more they shrunk with hypothermic limpness.
Not once did her eyes turn to notice me.

Time is a flour mill, forever turning in the wind, crushing memories and history together. The more the gears twist, the more the result is unfamiliar, a strange flower growing until it overtakes entire gardens. What was once there is never replaced, never repeated, not once.

So that was then, and it doesn't matter. This is now and it still doesn't matter. The only experience worth noting is how my wristwatch continues to fade into the anonymous present. It ticks one way first, then flings back into the present, like an oar consistently propelling our craft forward.

She gave me one dinner. I sat back, barely attempting to act casual. This, after all, was just a business date at a seedy place off in some distant nowhere corner. She sat stiff and appeared ordinary, none of that floaty bullshit. No makeup, casual dress, her hands laid out face down, innocently on the table.
She noticed me staring into her crusted, chewed up fingernails. I followed them up to her withered, chipped knuckles, past criss-crossed scars dug across the wrists, to her chest, spotted with sunbleached freckles and adorned with a plastic necklace. Her feet, chipped and tattered, could follow the same pattern. Not once did I glance down.

The more my heart beat excitedly, the more it sunk into it's own cavity, shrinking in anguish. The more my eyes grew wide, the more they shrunk with hypothermic limpness.

It all came to this, a brief cup of coffee, yogurt sprinkled with granola and a hasty goodbye.