Glimpsing a Moment

The air was musty and light, it had just finished raining only moments before. The sun was finally finding small pathways through the dense clouds and speckling small parts of the ground around us. The air had cooled considerably due to the rains and a light fog could be seen in the trees in the distance. We were all sitting around a table silently waiting for someone to kick the conversation off, but no one seemed to want that honor.

“Strange weather we are having?” The person to the left of me finally ventured.

“Oh, I don’t know, seems to be par for the area,” I replied, “This time of year, one needs a jacket, an umbrella, shorts, pants, t-shirt, and long-sleeve shirt everywhere they go. The weather is a bit psychotic around here.”

“Yeah,” they responded back, “I hear it’s tornado season as well.”

I rolled my eyes and thought of all the high winds and loud sirens that would be ruining my spring days. It had already been a relatively extreme winter, and now it looked like we were heading into a spiteful spring. I have found that I’m easily weather affected and this was not looking good.

Quickly tiring of discussing the weather I explored other possibilities of conversation at the table and found myself drawn to the creature sitting across from me. She sat introverted with her eyes closely appraising her hands. She ran her index finger of her left hand around each digit on her right, slowly seeking up to each tip and down into each valley. When she would get to either her pinky or thumb, she would work back the way she had come. I found myself entranced by the movement; it looked soothing.

She looked up for the briefest of moments and our eyes connected. It must have been too much for her; she hastily averted her eyes back down to her hands. I found myself compelled to continue observing her. I wanted desperately to find something else to lay my attention on, but I couldn’t. She opened up her frame and looked back into my eyes, this time with more fervor. It may have only been for another short second, but we were locked into each other, time suspended.

Her eyes pleaded with me. They showed me depths I could only slightly understand, depths that have no words for describing, just a bunch feelings that make no sense together. I had an overwhelming sense of sadness impressed upon me. It was the kind of sadness you can only see in someone when you have known great loss.

She made an attempt at a smile, but her eyes betrayed her. It felt like looking into an infinite abyss, I could see my own sadness reflected back. I just stared wishing there was something I could do. Wishing we could really share our sadness and excise it somehow. She tried her smile again, but to no avail. In an instant the pause was lost, we both looked away and knew the moment would never come back. We knew that our sorrows would be our own to deal with.

-V-