In the fields of Enna, gathering flowers
"I have met you before," I say, astonished, staring at him. But where? It seems so long ago. Maybe not in this life, maybe lifetimes ago, and that is a strange thought to one who does not believe in reincarnation. But when I look at you--it's as if ribbons of light shoot out through time, and the present falls off like old clothes. I feel you--the essential you--reverberating across time, see myself as the spectator, the witness to you. I was there. As were you. Maybe in every one of my lifetimes, it seems to me. Your face, your voice, the way you move is like a refrain, a melody stuck in my head, and only now I recognise the song itself, the artist. "Where have I met you before?" I ask, again, too loudly.
"In the fields of Enna, gathering flowers."
"No. No," I shake my head. Your hair is too curly, your eyes too brown, crooked. He, in Enna, had a beard; he wore black, and you are smooth-shaven in clothes the colour of sand.
You nod, knowing something I don't, and kiss my hand.
You smell of nicotine and you don't even smoke. You are the clumsiest of men, yet you take my hand and lead me onto the dance floor. I press my cheek against yours and your cologne has a note of sandalwood, the wood ancient temples are built from, fragrant after hundreds, after thousands of years.
I remember a Lapland witch--but a teenager, in her student cell--told me my true love had followed me into this life. I lay in a trance on her bed and asked her to describe him to me. When she said his eyes were blue, I was furious--for some reason, I had always imagined him brown-eyed, had wanted him to be of a certain shape and size, perhaps modelling him after an actor I adored at the time.
And five years later, he appeared, with black hair, blue eyes, a beard, and he hurt me like no one had hurt me before. And yet I believe he was the one, and long after our divorce, he has not stopped being the one. A person can be the one, and it does not matter whether he is wrong for you. It does not matter if he completely destroys you. That is completely immaterial. You can be made for each other even if you are poison to each other's souls. And for so long, I believed I was done, that I could lay my heart to rest and bury it since I'd already met you during this lifetime, and what more was there left for me?
And now--
--five years later--
--you--
"Shh," you whisper into my ears and dance as smoothly as you did in Vienna. Even if I have never been to Vienna.
"Shh," you whisper again as we make love and I wet your shoulder with my tears, stain it with my eyeliner.
In the morning, we will part for another lifetime, I realise as I lie awake while you sleep. Your eyes flutter open for a second--still too brown, still too crooked--and I pet your hair until you fall asleep again.
When sleep finally overcomes me, I am there waiting for you--
In the fields of Enna, gathering flowers.
Eight years later, I catch you when flicking through channels at 3 AM. You are in a movie, with a different face, a different body, yet my thumb stills on the remote. You hold out a single red poppy (red even if you are in black and white, and I know it is you even if the picture is grainy, know it to be you for sure). For a moment, you are looking at me, not the woman crying at your feet, and then an advert break loudly, garishly, vulgarly takes you from me.
It is a farewell. After what the doctors told me, it is just as well, but that you should stop by to say goodnight, goodbye astounds me. When I lay myself to sleep, I can still feel your lips at the nape of my neck, feel the petals of the poppy brushing against my mouth. And I know you will find me again,
In the fields of Enna, gathering flowers.