Connections (self portrait)

I met her when she was just a girl of twenty, uncertain of her future, unsure of herself, already a woman but still not fully an adult. I could still see her now, curled up in a chair or on a sofa like a cat, with a book on her lap, completely absorbed in the text, or with a notebook, writing away through the night, writing her stories. Stories she wouldn’t show anyone, reflections on her life, clearing up the confusion in her head by putting thoughts down on paper.

A silky strand of dark reddish hair falls over her face; she brushes it away to reveal a high forehead, wide cheekbones giving away her foreign origins, a defined nose and sharp blue-grey eyes, accentuated by jet black eyebrows and long eyelashes. Her small lips pursed, she focuses on page before her, unaware of the time and then it’s already late, and she has to be up early in the morning. She lights a cigarette and looks at the clock, counting the hours of sleep she could still catch, too few, always too few but she manages the escape the dark circles that would dampen the beauty of her eyes…

As I came into her life she barged into mine, demanding to be heard and hoping to be understood by someone she viewed as a kindred spirit. We read the same books, liked the same cities, listened to similar music and had a dynamic exchange of ideas on the subjects of politics, culture, and religion. It’s just the personal matters that we could not bring ourselves to discuss. Moments of happiness, fleeting and precious, preceded or followed by demands and accusations, not entirely unreasonable on her part. I left the country at the end of the summer, and I left her without saying goodbye.

And then there were the letters. As befits a coward, I got in touch with her from a safe distance of a few thousand miles and an ocean between us, with all due apologies and a pathetic attempt at an explanation for my sudden disappearance. Looking back now, I wonder if I fell for her then, or if it happened gradually, over the years, when the only thing that tied us together were these letters, sometimes light, sometimes happy, sometimes emotional, on occasion so abysmally depressing that I worried about her well being but never managed to properly express my care and concerns.

It took seven years. I was back in town, wandering around looking for something that I couldn’t place when I saw her walking towards me. She hadn’t changed much, her appearance still very youthful, the same round face, long hair, even the same look, blue jeans black boots leather jacket. She was walking towards me wearing sunglasses on an overcast day, I wasn’t sure whether she could see me but I felt like the world had stopped and there was only her. She looked the same, she was right here but the miles and the years have washed away all the feelings and all that remained was a connection, and the questions of what could have been, questions forever unanswered. I’m not sure if she saw me; she just walked past.