A Kind of Tomorrow (Excerpt)

3

Tell me who you are, that I may know you!

I saw you in their eyes,

Felt you in the hairs beneath their waists.

Then I lost you in the madness,

The ignorance and absent sight.

Still I search, as do we all,

For you: our wholeness, our freedom,

Our light, our darkness.

We all search, but most, shackled by dogma,

Find you only in dreams, and sneer at the few

Who dare find you in life.

***

He had been watching her for over an hour. She was quite the specimen. Even as he looked at her, standing behind that amber-lit bar, serving drinker after drunk, those memories flashed before his eyes. He did not sit where he sat that night, choosing instead to conceal himself from her line of sight behind a crowded table – frequents he figured, for they were currently ranting about football between generous gulps of beer with a proficiency only experience could provide. He wanted to watch her for as long as possible, without his gaze being returned, while awaiting the emergence of some victor in the battle raging in his mind between his desire for closure and his fear of complicating his life any further.

A door opened beside her, from behind the bar, and another woman emerged. She was carrying an ice bucket full of beers in a manner that suggested either of two things: that the contents of the bucket were, despite appearances, virtually weightless, or that she was inhumanly strong. As she loaded the drinks into compartments beneath the bar, Finari regarded his person of interest again. He had never seen a woman so beautiful, or so aloof. She looked like the whole world was nothing but a boring movie playing on repeat before her eyes, as her mind wandered in search of more enticing experiences.

This was the love he had lost in his memories. Could she be dreaming of him too? Or was that too much to hope for? There was so much he didn't know, so much that needed explanation. Why did he have these memories at all? Why was she in them? He looked on, seeing a smile brighten her face as the other woman patted her on the shoulder and vanished into the dimness from whence she had come. She followed the woman with her eyes until the door closed behind her, the light above reflecting off of the curly locks that surrounded her head like a halo, then turned around to face, once more, a world she clearly wanted little to do with. That was when their eyes met.

In that single moment, a wave of new memories crashed upon him, memories that gave fresh vitality to the very life to which they were seemingly tethered; memories of a childhood, their childhood, and feelings of infatuation, strange and novel to them then; memories of separation, of war and duty, and a peace that lit the flame of passion anew. As they stared at each other from across the bar, he remembered everything, all over again.

She seemed to be as petrified as he was when he saw her the first, and he wondered... Was this moment of locked gaze sending visions through her mind as well? They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, as the world itself fell silent, and finally disappeared. They were alone now, under a mango tree, the dirt cool beneath their feet from a light drizzle that had fallen some moments ago. Her head beads had fallen off in their haste to get away from everything, and he was helping her put them back on.