Chaucer

The brazen bell flopped back and forth as the door glided open with the frozen air. Blossoms of snow floated in behind her and fell on the grooved carpet mat that she wiped her brown treaded boots on. Perhaps it was the sudden rush of air, but the whole room seemed to bend or sway towards her. People, unbeknownst to themselves, turned in her direction. Even the door seemed to be grasping for her as it fell back in place. She advanced into the little Scandinavian tea shop, her red woolen scarf down in waves from her shoulders. One cream colored hand reached up to brush a lock of hair from her eyes. It was a warm brown, the kind perfectly displayed in the light of something alive, like fire or candles. A faded grey tank top covered her upper body, but ruffled at the bottom around her naval. Rather than straighten it out, she reached down and spread her fingers out over her stomach, which just barely protruded due to her posture. She was every wife that husbands ever died for, and every woman that men ever sought after in that moment. The short line quickly depleted and she wrapped her hands around the strap of her blue bookbag and leaned forward only slightly, as she was soft spoken unless conveying something she felt ardently, to place her order. She took a table next to a window overlooking a small arched pedestrian bridge, and further below a small canal. She pulled out a book, Chaucer, rather thick and clearly worn, but did not open it yet. Her fingers timidly felt the corner and pulled on the pages, echoing the sound of shuffling cards. Her eyes were outside, on the people crossing the bridge. She saw many different people, as they were not particularly aware of her and kept a quick pace and agenda, but she did not look at them. She focused on the eyes of each man and woman, not for want of recognition but because that is the easiest and most honest definition of a person. A bearded man in a corderoy overcoat brought the tea, and she broke from the bridge to thank him. Every thing, everyone slowed. Time stretched onward, trying to ignore this woman who as a little girl never owned a pet but played with all the stray dogs that gathered at the end of her unpaved street, but she held it under her foot like the train of a dress, pulling tighter. Everything seemed to intensify, herself the nexus of some other-dimensional light source. On the bridge a little boy stretched over the white stone side with his grandfather and threw rocks in for their ripples. The older watched the younger, and remembered back when he was born, and the feeling of unbridled love and bliss that had accompanied the birth. He had never been a particularly emotional man, not cold but sorry he had not felt as much as he thought he should. But he felt now, and even threw in a few pebbles. Everything was caught in the air, in the middle of something. Then the ripples spread further, and the supernatural light receded but did not fade or disappear. It retreated to surrounding her, its caretaker, and flowing outward shortly with the lethargy of underwater seaweed. She picked up her tea and sampled it, then looked down at the corner of the Chaucer book.

She was thinking, but about what I cannot or will not say. Is it possible to think of something, and then have that thing happen simultaneously or later on, but only if you treat it with respect and caution? I hope so. I want so much to finally meet her, I don't know if she is or ever will be in that shop, but I know that she is real. I know.

Words are just enough air to continue to beat.

*TW*