ESMERALDA came in wearing a green dress. She arrived with the others, pointing out her name at the registration with her pretty ringed fingers. Her name was there, as was mine just a few lines away. I was surprised that she even remembered me. I was certain I had been entirely forgotten, maybe on purpose. She had skipped town months before, but here she was again in the full flesh. I asked Esmeralda where she had been all this time. If she only knew how many black nights I had walked home thinking of her, or half expecting her to appear from some shadow or behind some corner, only to whistle on alone in solemn disappointment. She said that she had been busy. ‘I’ve been so busy,’ she said. She was a busy kind of woman.
In the summer, during the festival, I would watch her walking up and down the street. She was always talking to someone, and she was mostly in a good mood when she wasn’t having one of her sad-looking sulky days, when she sat in the corner staring out the café windows. I asked Esmeralda why she hadn’t responded to any of my love letters, but she told me that there was no need to. She did this fluidly, as if she was dancing between the registration desk and the coffee. There were many bureaucrats in white shirts buzzing around. Her potato brown hair was pulled back. There was something about those eyes. Esmeralda has clever, fox-like eyes.
I could see her soft comforting milky white chest poking out of the top of that dress she had on, the same way you might see a gold coin reflecting the sunlight at the bottom of a clearwater lake or pool. Or the same way you might see a distant light in the night sky and wonder if it was a planet. What struck me was how at ease we were with this whole thing by now. It had become the default for us. It ebbed, it flowed, it undulated, rolled along and vibrated but it was reliably there, as sure and as trustworthy as the sunshine. ‘But you do know that I love you,’ I told her at registration. Esmeralda only smiled, her smart eyes drawing up into half moons. She placed a finger on my lips and said, “Hush, hush, hush.” Then I felt her all over me and in every part of me like a March wind. In my bones, in my blood, in my hair.
Everywhere.
north! 