Fleeting Contact

Well, it finally happened. I saw her. My train was crossing the intersection of Church and Duboce and I saw her on the corner decide to wait for it to pass. For a second I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. She's dead, my mind said, she no longer exists.

But she did exist, standing on the corner, looking at my train. I thought, she's going to see me for sure, then she looked a different direction. I started waving a slow, plaintive wave, for what seemed like a long time, but was only a few seconds-- maybe a half-dozen waves. I stopped waving. She continued surveying the street. Her head stopped when it came to me, long enough that I was certain. I started waving again. She hesitated for a pregnant moment, then waved back. My train finished crossing the intersection and came to stop in front of my-- our-- old apartment, and then it was over. She crossed behind the train with the rest of the people on the corner, and I turned away from the window and sat back down in my seat.

I looked around the train to see if anyone noticed. I could feel myself breathing hard, feel my brain buzzing with exclamation points. I certainly felt like people should be looking at me, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I tried to take deep breaths. Then I changed my music player to something cathartic. My phone buzzed with a received text and my heart leapt. It was from a friend about meeting later in the evening. Sigh.

When I saw her, I saw a shadow future pass before my eyes. Things that would not be. In those few seconds any fragile illusions that I was over the worst of this, that it would be as easy as I naively hoped a week and a half ago, drained like water from a suddenly cracked plastic bucket. It isn't over. It's not even halfway yet. In a way it was a relief. I will not feel like a sociopath or a bloodless traveler. My love is real and will be real in the future. I was never faking anything.

Things have gotten decidedly harder since Bri left on Sunday. My roommate is gone for a couple weeks and I still haven't cleaned up from Bri's visit. My apartment looks like I am. I am a mess. Music doesn't sparkle the way it did the first and second weeks, but I am at least as emotionally unbalanced. Or maybe my emotions are just more on-target. I miss Sarah and think about missing her on a regular basis now. Each time my mind grabs onto something specific about her, it's sad like sand oozing out between my fingers. I know I'm never going to remember it with that same clarity. If I ever remember it again, it will be an old memory. Alas, such is loss and such is the tragedy of time's passage.