The Definition of Unlikely Passion
She walks, but feels herself gliding instead.
That’s probably the drinks.
Staring up at the sky, she sees the stars staring back at her. They’re welcoming, embracing, reminding her of all the wishes made on their backs when she was a child.
When did I turn into a fucking hippie?
She trips on the sidewalk, is robbed of her mood for a moment, looks around to see if her stumble was witnessed. She sees that she’s alone, then throws herself back into the wave of nostalgia.
She’s thinking of the light inside of her. She’s thinking of the water dream and how it’s settled now. She’s thinking of the emotion that sits on her shoulder, the one she can’t label; the one she doesn’t want to label; the one that feels like it’s watching. She’s thinking of the star and she’s thinking of her wish upon it: to feel like this forever.
Maybe that’s not the best of wishes.
She remembers the day she walked to work, sweating. She remembers hating the world and wanting to quit: school, work, life. Just quit. She remembers wanting the relief of the air conditioned variety store; relief that would only last for a moment, that moment before the anger toward the children with allowances would set in. She loved that time, but fuck, it would never last. She walked with dread and reached the scorching parking lot. She tried to ignore everyone around her, keeping her head low.
Fuck!
She almost tripped over her: hunched over, seated on the pavement, her white hair frizzy in the humidity. She didn’t notice our narrator; she didn’t notice anything but her sketch pad, looking up every three seconds.
What the fuck is she looking at?
Our narrator squinted her eyes, wiping the sweat away with her right hand and there, amongst the heat waves pulling themselves away from the pavement, was a shoot of green; a flower forcing its life upon the parking lot.
And this woman with the frizzy white hair was capturing it.
Our narrator turned her head, still walking toward the variety store, staring at the woman.
She’s beautiful. Absolutely fucking beautiful.
And on this day,as she walks through her new neighbourhood, when she’s thinking of this moment lost so many years ago, she thinking that the worst thing that air conditioning has done is that no one has screen doors anymore.
