Places - November 29, 2010

 She was angry that I had taken her here, I could tell just by looking at her. So I held her hand a little tighter and hoped she wouldn’t turn around. She had already insisted we go for an espresso, go to her place, to somewhere urban.

    We passed through the rough patch in the path by ducking under the extended branches. She cursed as a rogue stick caught in her shoe. Her nostrils were flared when she looked up at me again and she looked expectant. I assured her, it wasn’t much further. Then, as we walked, the silence was only broken by small animals scurrying in the distance and her soft, frustrated sighs. We were going to watch the sunrise, she thought it sounded clichéd and fraudulent like we were trying to role play some hopeless romantic novella. She didn’t understand.

    Finally, we came to the shore of a pond that met the woods, where beavers lived and built dams, where the water was murky with dead leaves. I stopped to look through the tangled veil of twisted branches in front of me. Glancing from her to the skyline, I remembered the days before I met her when I would come to this spot before, always alone. I had often been alone back then.

    “Sometimes I came here to cry, you know…I mean, I used to, when mom died.”

    She let go of my hand to rub her forehead, I wondered what she was thinking, if she was still very angry. Maybe I had diminished my masculinity too much, maybe she didn’t want to know these things about me. I guess somewhere in that time the sun had begun to come up because there was suddenly light. Dull and young, but still a light.

    “Didn’t you ever have….a place? Where you can go and cry like a baby?”

    She breathed in deep and spoke with an exhale. “There was this tree in my neighbour’s backyard. It was, like, completely hallowed out from rot. I used to crawl in there and pretend I was an owl.” I smiled at the image, her limbs folded against herself, hugging her knees. Going hoot in the night. Then she said, “But it was cut down a long time ago.”

    I took back her hand and squeezed it tight again and she blinked at me and shuffled closer. The sun was rising quickly, illuminating everything a little. Now, you could see the glare of it on the water.

    “I’m glad this place is here still.” I said.

    “It’s…it’s…” she wouldn’t say beautiful or inspiring, so she said, “I’m glad too.”

    We were little, a peak of something. A light that was dull and young. But still a light.

FIN

-Kortnee Tilson