It happened...

from 2000, days at UF

It happened.  And it was nothing like I thought it would be; but few things are, I suppose.  So many times I imagined seeing a certain face, saying certain words, feeling certain ways.  So many times, but so many times didn’t equal what actually happened.  In my mind, we’d be bitter, or we’d be cold.  In my mind, one of us would win and one of us would not.  It was always like that with this mind, the thinking behind the eyes that once beheld mine so carefully.  In my mind, I expected games.  In my heart, I expected a little stale pain left over from years ago when we still knew each other. 

It happened.  And it was nothing like I thought it would be.  I turned a corner and you left a building and there we were.  Three years since the catastrophe and two since I last saw your face and there we were, face to face.  Again.  My heart jerked from the surprise and I slowed without thinking, not sure what to say.  It felt like I’d found something I knew I’d run across some day but wasn’t quite prepared for yet.  The way our eyes traced each other’s two years aged bodies and faces… it was curious; it was interesting.  It was nothing like I thought it would be.  It was gentle and it was ambivalent.  It was strange.  We stared at each other.  The interest and the inquisitive gleam shooting between us were clearly visible and there was nothing I could do to control either one.  But I suppose there would have been no use in trying to contain such natural responses to resurfaced drownings of the past.   

It happened.  I saw the older face of a boy I once knew and he saw me, too.  We wondered with our eyes and asked not the questions that wanted so much to be asked with our mouths.  We remembered with our souls the pains we endured for and because of each other.  We, in that moment, experienced each other.  And it was nothing like I thought it would be.