My favourite paths in the park, my secret spots for sunsets, she painted over the city’s memories with brighter colours and richer tones so I forgot the cross-woven patina of faded memories hiding beneath.
I had no meaning till I met her, till her intrigued fingers traced my arm one warm August evening. We met on a Friday at the house of a mutual friend. She was sitting on a couch in the half-lit loft sketching with a blue ballpoint pen. We had both left the pandemonium of the party. As I entered the room, her inquisitive eyes studied my every curve, recorded my every movement. Those eyes entranced me. Her gaze gave meaning.
We sat on the couch while she sketched. I told her the scattered stories of my youth, the trials, triumphs, and despair. She drew out my histories, with soft, careful questions: The long hair I cling to, and the ex-girlfriend I cling for; the fading definition in my forearms, and the years I swam. She talked, quietly detailed her detachment and the art that let her reconnect.
We saw each other the next morning over coffee and bagels at a deli downtown with nice tables on the sidewalk. We both liked the outdoors. Not greenery, nor nature, but the liberty of distant walls, the breath of freedom found in unpenned air. She sketched the entire time. Still a little rough around the edges from being out so late, I consumed my coffee in needful sips. I asked if her sketching wasn’t also a nervous habit, a solace for unsure hands. She said it was like an internal dialogue, the discussions in her head that went on while she watched the world around her. She set her pen down to spread cream cheese on a slice of bagel. She moved the knife carefully, painting the cream cheese in precise proportions, an even sheet with soft overflows around the bagel’s edge, and then she ate it the same way.
For a while we sat there, quiet, watching Sunday commerce pass along the sidewalk: lovers holding hands on their way to brunch, hurried worshippers on their way to church, harried worshippers herding their kids home.
We would often sit together, quiet, the passing scenes our conversation.
After many such meetings, I would come to see her sketching earnestly, in fierce charcoals she would caress with eager fingers, massaging them into soft, relaxed, langorous shades. Everything was new with her. The restaraunts where we ate ceased to remember any meals previously taken. I had not seen a movie till I had watched it with her. My favourite paths in the park, my secret spots for sunsets, she painted over the city’s memories with brighter colours and richer tones so I forgot the cross-woven patina of faded memories hiding beneath.
One day she took me down to the lake where we climbed aboard a canoe and drifted across the water. She insisted on rowing: it was her turn to take me out.