Meet Me In The Hallway

Blue Water

"Corazon, are you listening? You are so distracted today." Milo was being kind. I've been distracted since I got in the door. Since before I left for Shanghai.

I think maybe I've been distracted for the whole year we've been together. Or the 7 months we've shared his apartment. Truthfully, I've been distracted for five years. Since I looked into green eyes and knew myself. Lost myself.

"Sorry, love," I say, not baby, never baby. I make my way to his side of the tiny table in our breakfast nook and sit on his broad lap. He's so handsome and I try to get lost in his blue eyes or thick scruff or the arms that bulge around me.

"No, it's ok, mi amor, just missed you all week." He eyes me meaningfully and I linger when he puts his lips to mine. My eyelids flutter along with the bats in my belly. The kiss feels like the first drop on a rollercoaster, the best kiss I've had after, well, after everything. It took me years, literal years, and thousands of miles of distance to think about anything but pink lips that plumped at the edges.

When I first decamped to the Philippines and later Singapore, it was about moving forward, fast. Not being in any place I'd shared with Harry was imperative and his name was all over Australia for me. His name was all over nearly the entire world map. Falling in love on a world tour is romantic as hell, but it also changes the dots and stars all over any map into black marks of a different shade.

So I went places we missed, or that my memories were shaky of, and where I was offered jobs. There is that all important consideration. I'm selfish and like to eat a couple times a day. I wanted, no I needed, to be able to support myself. My parents, bless them, would help me if needed. I could tell they knew my flight was about more than just a quarter life crisis, especially my mom, that there was deep heartbreak. They knew who too, but we didn't talk about it.

That may have to be my epithet.

Even with their sympathy, the long looks and soft eyes, I couldn't ask for money when I was leaving home to pursue the career they didn't care for. I didn't go to uni like they wanted; maybe like I wanted, before I wanted Harry more.

So, I ran, far and foreign away and learned to make some kind of sense of different alphabets. It seemed easier to decode than the behavior of someone who claimed to love me. The Philippines, though a firm stepping stone, was such culture shock, I felt like I was literally wandering through a different planet. I was from a place singular in so many ways, and I'd traveled the whole world at the ripe old age of 21, so it was shocking how lost I was.

The language was different, the animals were different, a little less deadly, it was crowded. The people seemed different, but I've found that they only speak a language I haven't learned yet and look a little different, people are people. Complicated and simple and searching for what they want, don't have or once had. Even with a growing awareness of the sameness even in a new place it was still hard, and most importantly, distracting. I worked and lived and tried to learn to eat new things and a new word, never two letters, everyday, the next plan was to learn to talk to a new person too.

I was relieved when my Singapore visa came through. Singapore was contained in a way that the chain of islands and mass of people I'd left was not. There were also a lot more people from all over, and lots of things were in English. I found my footing easier there, and I found friends too. After six months of living away from home, I found an apartment to share with a girl from New Zealand. We were both tall blondes and people mixed us up a lot, though we thought our accents were nothing alike, as we always protested.

Kara became my best friend. She was a blast, and since what was left of me was a blown out bunker, there was no place for me to run into myself and hide like last time. This heartbreak was so much more colossal in scale any way, I couldn't hide it. It was written on my face and stitched into my skin. She never asked for specifics or factoids, except for his name and occupation. It leaked out over time as I started to put the pieces of my heart back onto my sleeve.