Printemps

Apr 22, 2008 - 11:33 AM PST

Falling in love is nefarious. I asked if he prefers straight or curly hair; mine goes both ways, if I struggle hard enough. He doesn’t mind, he said, they’re not things that matter. Mind over matter: I prefer to think with my heart.

Emotion is like blood, it stains. I’ll see you again, he promised me, naming the places where we would meet. I said nothing. In separation, says Marcel Proust, it is the one who is not really in love who says the most tender things. People who write about feelings make me feel a little less different, a little more normal. They say the things that I would rather not acknowledge.

He’s an astronomer. Tell me something I don’t know about the sky, I told him. Don’t underestimate me. He said something about a star, millions of years old. Something about how it could have exploded by now, but we don’t know, here on Earth, because we still see it as it was millions of years ago. He said something about how you can see it in spring and summer, but not in winter. I don’t remember the name of the star. I remember his eyes lighting up as he spoke of it, and his hand leaving my back to point up.

I’ll curl my hair. I’ll look up the name of the star that introduces spring. I’ll see you again: choose the time and the place.

And then I’ll spend hours trying to take out the stains.