You were inside me, once, curled up like coral. Tiny, tight-furled, almost translucent – I could see right through your pearly skin. Now it’s everyone else who sees through you instead, but it’s everyone else who’s wrong. About so many things! Like love, for example. It’s not blind at all, because I see you perfectly, even in –
“Maria!”
– the middle of a crowd like this, I see you and I feel you, holding my hand, as I always imagined. Everyone else is blind, because they look and do not see. I see you just as I dreamed you: a perfect fusion of known and unknown. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go.
“Maria!” – I don’t know why this woman’s always so worked up – “How are things?”
She follows me everywhere, this one, and never likes my answers – see, she’s frowning now.
“Time for another chat, Maria?”
Why? We’ve had so many chats. I don’t have time for another. I tell her we’re busy again, you and me, and she pulls her disappointed face.
There’s a jingle-jangle over the road.
The woman’s lost in thought. Perhaps she’ll let us go.
Then, “I know!” She cracks a smile. “How about an ice cream, sweetheart? What flavour?”
She’s looking at you, my darling, for the first time. You‘re smiling back. I hope you’ll remember your manners.
“Thank you,” I say, for you. “We’d like that very much.”
We walk over to the van, the three of us.
© Joanna Rubery 2017