The window blind is slowly raising and falling every so often, moved by gentle gusts of warm wind from the outside, letting in little balls of light into an otherwise dark room. I like to lie on my back here and just look at the clock. It’s one of those old ones which I found in a charity shop; round and fiercely red all around with white face and black hands. It’s funny how in English all these elements have names of human body parts. Face. Hands. Why are there no legs then? As if time was actually a living being, a human, but without lower limbs to move on. And yet, somehow this cripple does go, only ever forward, never back. Tic tac, tic tac.
Did I mention there is a smiling Mickey Mouse on the face of the clock as well? Sometimes, when I stare really hard into it, I don’t even see Mickey, just the hands of the clock. I concentrate and I’m actually able to move them backwards, to a time when I didn’t even know you. Yeah, apparently there was a time like this, although it seems like twelve forevers ago; some distant, irrelevant past to me now.
Somehow it usually happens that the rightest people, the ones who seem to be tailor-made for you, who seem to be rolled up and built from your own words, appear in the moment that is simply not right, by any means. I know – always forward, never back, tic tac.
You know, pequeñita, when I lie on my back like this, I like to come up with a script and dialogues, imagine the plot of a story about how it would have been if you had appeared at my door just a couple years earlier. Not much. Just those exact couple of years. The plot wouldn’t be anything like Bonnie and Clyde, you know, nothing like “the two of us in a big bad world, looking for a place to call home”. No, it could just be a simple road movie, as long as you are in it.
Cut to us, slowly cruising across a wide highway in a blue Mustang. It’s hot. The sun is not too bright but we have our sunglasses on anyway, because that’s just how we roll. I wish I could say that the wind combs through my hair just like it dances with your crazy curls, but it doesn’t – even in this reality I forgot to give myself some hair… I smoke though, just to add some coolness to it. I glance at you when you tell me a funny story, already so animated and laughing hard before you even get to the funny bit as usual, and I love it even more when it turns out it’s not even funny at all, but I can only nod in the right places and pretend I’m listening when in reality I simply can’t. My heart is exploding again, defeated by you being just you and the emotion drowns and melts me from inside like hot chocolate, leaving me hardly able to drive. It feels like before I met you I looked at the world with one eye closed. I have to play it cool behind my sunglasses, though, I can’t show you just like that how deeply, madly and completely I fell for you. I like it when you think you still have to work to win me over.
Another sun ray pierces the room from behind the lifted blind and I am transported back to my room. Tic fucking tac. Why do I keep the room dark, you ask? Well, it’s like I’m putting my hands inside pitch-black darkness and touch everything there until I pull you out like a rabbit out of a hat and all of a sudden you are here with me, in this place where it seems like the time stands still…
There are inexplicable things in this world, you know: man buns, Crocs, déjà vu or dark matter. Difficult to explain, sure. But why can’t anyone figure out a fucking time machine yet? Why can’t we move the time back and meet when there are not so many scratches and cracks on our souls, where mistakes of others do not loom above us, trying to kill the last remains of innocence and naivety we still have left?
Cut to us, sitting in a restaurant. Yes, we want it all and to share. Side orders? Yes, please. Another bottle of wine? C’mon man, we thought we had told you to keep it coming the moment we sat down. I don’t need booze to feel at ease with you, little one. No, it’s so that I can concentrate on something else for a moment than undressing you with my eyes from the other side of the table. I often wonder if other diners find it weird that we both pick the same things from the menu without even talking and if they marvel at the amount of food two people can eat. It’s like we are both trying to impress each other, like a child on a bike – ‘look mum, no hands!’, but that’s not it. It’s the appetite for life that drives us, no Diet coke existence for us. You just know me, from my A to my Z. And it wasn’t even a plot, this, just a random real memory, which makes it all the harder to swallow now.
Well, time to roll the window blind up and come to meet the world before I become completely see thru here. Mickey is smiling at me, and why shouldn’t I smile back? I do, and I also hope you find someone who will take good care of you, babe. I really do.
Things that start by accident, like us, should never finish in a mistake. That’s why I’ll never send this to you. But let me tell you something, my pretty little thing. If one day, after I have found the closest thing I can to this in someone else and settle down, marry, maybe have a dog, and you look back with regret about what could have been, don’t go looking for me, because I will be really pissed off with you then.
But call me the moment you do. I’ll burn some bridges and come.
Tic, tac, tic, tac.