Murmurs and Musings of Months Past

“Unspeakably romantic.” He sat opposite her in this little corner café hidden in the unassuming quiet of the middle of the city. His fingers brushed through his pitch black, long hair, the ends curling up on his shoulders, and the fringe falling back defiantly over his face. She watched this for two hours. He had breakfast and then later lunch. There was something very accomplished about him, a smile that said “I have done well, I know it.” But at the same time, a child sat opposite her. A persistent one, at that. Like the kid that sits on a play mat, trying to work out which block goes in which shaped hole. Quietly frustrated, quietly determined. 

She's hugged this person before. She has kissed him. She's thought about him out of care, concern, love. And though the physicality of their relationship was short lived and almost nonexistent, she thinks the world of this boy - this man - before her. She wants to know that he is doing okay, that amongst the busyness and the business of his life, he is “whole.” 

He looks at her, and with arms outstretched motioning a circle, he remarks “you’re whole. I can see that you’re whole.” 

And she look at him and she sees that he’s not whole. And it’s not bad. He’s doing well. But everyone aims to be whole. They all aim to tick the boxes, the boxes that they have for themselves, and not those designed by others or by society. But she wants true happiness for this guy. She wants him to feel loved honestly, to love himself honestly, and to love someone else honestly. When she tells him she has found someone to love honestly, she realises that they sit opposite each other as friends. They talk openly about our brief encounter with each other. She thinks during that conversation, during her second pour of peppermint tea, that if the timing was different, she would very well consider someone like him. So different to who she is whole with at that moment. And it is because, under all that trouble, worry, wall building, the person sitting opposite her is a decent human being. Mournfully beautiful. Unspeakably romantic. These are the way in which life goes “well” but is perfectly imperfect. A constant edging towards wholeness - whatever that may be for the individual soul.