She has little dimples in the hollows of her cheeks. She's so different from anyone I've been with before, whether in a relationship or out of it. All others before have been like fire as I am water; they would burn and they would burn me until I was air, until there's nothing else left for me to give until it all comes back.
But no, she's completely different. Like the smell of wet soil after a Santa Rosa or the feel of newly laundered cotton sheets. There's no ashes, or searing heat; there's life, there's this feeling of growth.
She's a teacher. A real teacher. Those people who were born to be teachers, you know? Of course one's craft can be polished and perfected but she has this ability which renders me speechless every time. I stumble with my words, or mix up my languages until it's a kind of hybrid tongue that every bilingual person will eventually craft to their own need. But this girl? No, she's silent but loud, a type of intuition of knowing what words will make a certain sense with specific other words. Anything makes sense with her. She takes my mess of letters and ideas and colors and vague shapes and, kind of, sorts them out? And helps me understand them. When I don't understand, she responds in her lovely soprano tones with all the clarity of a freshwater spring, her patience a river running. And when I understand she smiles very softly, softly enough to let you make out the dimples on her full cheeks and this very faint rosy color she has etched on her skin.
She looked unreal under the pale yellow light from our city's old street lamps. She lives in Caballito not far off from where I live, and she has all the fluidity and mannerisms of someone from the capital; her oversized cardigan dancing around her shapely thighs while holding onto her Starbucks coffee and messenger bag. The book fair is just about to close any minute now, but there she is, rummaging through old treasures, her face a look of silent pleasure as she's engulfed in the smell of old faded out pages.
"Smell this" and she comes up with the book open in her hands, comes up close, close, really close, so close I can count the little sun freckles framing her cheekbones, and gingerly guides my chin down with her two thin fingers.
It's a Bioy Casares book probably older than my father. She says she has the same story, but she wants this old bastard anyway.
"Why would you want it if you've read it already?" I blurted away, my voice sounding a bit hushed, secretive.
"Oh, why? Look. Isn't it great?" And she opens the book right at the flyleaf, her hazel eyes gleaming as she waits for my response.
Occupying the entire leaf was a dedicatory. A dedicatory from the year 1976. From what I could make out, an uncle recommending it to his nephew on his 22nd birthday, flowing out in thin wisps of blue ink in form of almost-scrawny cursive. The uncle was named Jorge. His nephew, Martín.
"Isn't this amazing? Almost 40 years ago, Kiki. This is so intimate, I can't let it just sit around on the street. Do you imagine what might've happened to them? Say," and she turned her bright gaze towards me, and there it is again: that old knack for teaching. She had me at the edge of my seat, thirsty for whatever she was going to ask. She had already fished out my curiosity with this old heirloom, this heirloom that was now our heirloom, what probably was an old piece of junk for a normal person but God was she far from any type of normal. Now I was standing on the tips of my toes practically, just waiting for her question. And that's when she clasped my hand so gently that it was barely a touch but it was still there, and leaned so close that I thought she was going to kiss my cheek, and that would've been so embarrassing but oh, por favor how I wanted it, how I want her,
"...do you think you can write a story about them? Anything. Whatever you want."
She kissed me while we waited for my bus. There wasn't a lot of people on the street. I wouldn't have cared anyway. And on my way home I swear I tried to make up stories for Martin and Jorge, to give them mothers and towns and quirks, but all I could think about was the feel of her lips against mine, how she smelled like sandalwood, how long her neck is and how rounded her nose is, until I fell into a sleepy wakefulness, there, on the back of the bus with the windows fully open, thinking about this girl and how I keep saying to myself I don't want a relationship and how I like other people as well and want to give them a shot as well but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss someone worrying about me, someone to hold hands with when I'm anxious or hair to play with. Maybe I should, shouldn't? I don't know. All I know is that now laying on my bed and looking at my poster-decked wall I miss a very particular pair of hazel eyes and I want to know exactly how many freckles frame them.
POSTED BY little girl blue ON Monday, January 26, 2015 @ 2:48 AM
