Quiet Hour

If body language has always been the heavier side of the see-saw, weighing me down, words are what keep me afloat in the sky, above the yellow sand and blue rubber that make up the playground below. It didn’t affect me that movements effortlessly pulled off by my peers seemed jerky and ill-fitting on me, like a costume everyone else was measured for while I got the scraps…or maybe the hand-me-downs. I was uplifted when teachers would call me well-spoken, friend’s parents praised me for being so well-mannered, and classmates would ask me for help with spelling and grammar. While I was floundering outside the academic world, I could ignore it all as long as I was the star student in everyone’s eyes.

As I tried to foster the talent in my fingertips, I tried to develop as much variety as possible. I tried haikus, essays, non-fiction, scriptwriting, flash fiction, you name it and I have taken a class and can show you my notes and homework. The only problem? I began to fall behind. I began to lose that purchase which held my entire life, and I let it slip between my fingers until I held onto the very last piece of thread; once I thought I had let go, I held a small funeral in my head for that part of me and moved on with my life. As my abuela had always said, “Why spend more than five minutes on something that won’t matter in five years?”

However, a talent’s flame being snuffed out doesn’t mean it’s out of practice forever. There’s still the rest of the wick and wax to burn, so might as well keep using the remnants as a light when things start to feel too dark. That’s why I find joy in sitting along the river Seine and basking in the sounds of the running water, the running children, the parents on romantic picnic dates, the old folks walking along with their wooden canes, and the rustling of the leaves. I tilt my head up towards the cloudy sky, sniffing the busy air and I could swear I taste the sounds vibrating all around me. The thought makes me smile, even though I know I’m just in a good mood. The feelings won’t last, but that’s ok—as long as I get to experience them again, I don’t mind having to fight for them back.

I twitch a little in surprise when someone sits next to me on the cobblestone edge. I guess it’s public space, anyone can sit next to me if they’d like, but it’s strange to see someone violate such a fundamental social rule. I glance to my right to catch a glimpse of this bold stranger and feel my face go a little slack with surprise when I find a pretty girl staring at the waterfront, her long legs dangling off the side just like mine. The faux-fur leg warmers, ripped tights and short jean shorts sport so many accessories I actually question my hearing a bit because how on earth did I not hear her coming up behind me? Was I that lost in thought, engrossed in the poetry I was trying to write for the first time? Maybe so.

Her blue eyes slide over to meet mine and her cheeks pinken a little when she sees I’ve been staring. My cheeks heat at being caught red-handed and I look down at my notebook with scribbled words in a neat script. I wrinkle my nose in disgust at my nonsense ramblings and my very forced attempt at something other than prose. I would rather stare at anything other than my own words…I look back up, swallowing my nervousness away. The gorgeous slant of her nose compliments the way the crinkles around her eyes move so immaculately I’m stunned into silence for a fraction of a second. I think this is the moment I finally understand what a picture is worth more than a thousand words—all the little things she does, I see; and I have a funny feeling everything I say in my head she reads. We sit there, along the Seine during golden hour with the wind ruining my hair and dancing in hers, exposing her lips that she has pulled back in a wide grin as she silently observes me. No, not silently—quietly. I flutter my eyes closed so I can perk up my ears and focus on the steady rhythm she breathes.

In, out, in, out…just like the ocean in Marseille, when our family drove down so we could have a day playing in the waves and catching a tan that seemed like it lasted all of summer. I open my eyes again and smile back at her, appreciating the way she takes up just the right amount of space. Not even when I didn’t know who she was when she sat down next to me, in those few seconds before I looked at her, I felt alright with her presence. She doesn’t crowd me, physically and emotionally.

She can see the question in my head, and she responds with a look to the side and an embarrassed scratch on the side of her nose. American, then. Shame, I doubt she can speak any French and I sure as hell didn’t pay attention to the English my elementary and middle schools taught me. I internally curse my decision to learn German in high school. She guides me down with the movements of her eyes, I follow her down to where the page flops open and exposes my scribbles to her hungry blue irises to eat up. I shoot my hand out the quickest I’ve ever moved my arm in my life and cover up the page with my large palm, flushed from the exertion and panic. It takes me a few seconds to gain the courage to look back at her, but time feels like it’s moving too fast so I mentally slap myself and force myself to do it. I turn my head that feels like it’s made of stone and focus my gaze on the light streak across her face, made by the bright golden sunset in the background and a tree branch’s shadow. Even the long, ugly pattern seems to shape and bend into something beautiful and natural when painted on her skin. She, in a way I can’t really explain, seemed like the most natural thing on this planet and for a brief moment contemplated whether or not I had met Goddess Earth herself.

I gathered my notebook up in my firm grasp and bound it shut, then turned back around and swung my legs out over the edge again so we’re both side by side, facing the river together. Although, instead of staring ahead like we had before, we both tilt our heads and stare at each other in mutual comfortability, like old friends who counted wrinkles on their faces as they grew old together. Could that be us? That’s ridiculous, I just met this girl a few minutes ago and embarrassed myself in front of her, and I want to grow as old as our friendship? What a silly thought, but one that made my chest heat up with the frantic excitement of new love.

Her shoulder moves up and she regards me with half-lidded eyes, but all I can think about for a couple seconds is how I can see the curl of her eyelashes and the white makeup in her waterline. So creative, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on someone. I like it. To me, that felt like poetry. That brought me back to the present, where she was pressing me to show her the notebook. I don’t like showing anyone my writing, I say in the short, curt shake of my head from left to right. Her expression falls the tiniest bit and I find myself with the desire to stab myself rather than hurt her in this encounter instead. So, with a deep breath, I open it back up and flip to a page where I wrote an exercise about describing a chosen object in as much detail as possible. I chose a purple lily as the subject, and at the time I wasn’t sure why, but now I feel an overwhelming compulsion to show her this, that this moment is why I wrote this piece in the first place.

As the freckles moved on her skin as she slightly moved with each inhale and exhale, I observed the click when she rolled her ankle in a circle and the way one of her rings seemed a little loose for her hand. That same finger trembled slightly right before she finished reading and studied his face. A bead of sweat trickled down from behind my ear down to where my shirt meets my neck. I realize I’m no longer cold with this girl next to me, even in the windy fall air. I think she’s just messing with me, though, because after a few nerve-wracking seconds of her studying me with an intense look of her face, the most radiant smile graces her lips and she all but replaces the sun as it dips the last of its sunshine below the wavering horizon. I blink in shock. The last person to ever smile like that at me was…

I smile and exhale sharply as relief wraps me in a warm, happy embrace, like that of a heated blanket. In fact, I’m so suddenly elated that she actually liked my words that I chuckle, not able to stop myself as I rock forward and continue laughing puffs of visible breath into the air. I’m blessed with what must be the sound of her laughter all around us that I purposely mute all my other senses, leaving only hearing to truly listen to that beautiful symphony of giggles and the occasional horse-like snort. I laugh a little harder upon hearing that for the first time and she weakly punches me in the upper arm.

We sit in true silence for another hour, both meditating on different things. The bewitching soul beside me muses over the flow of the sparkling water while completely oblivious to the fact that she’s my current muse. As I sit next to her and trade stares between her body and my blank pages, a million words fill my head and threaten to spill out onto the page. Yet I hold steady, not letting the ink touch the paper just yet. I don’t want to waste this space and ruin my perfect portrait of her. Our very first quiet hour was spent in complete silence yet a thousand feelings that completely rewired my brain chemistry.

...

I haven’t seen her since, but she is still fresh in my mind. Sometimes I wonder about her, if she went back to America, and sometimes if I allow myself to, what state she’s from. Most days, when I don’t afford myself that luxury, I wander back to that very same spot and sit down to practice writing poetry. I haven’t missed a Wednesday's quiet hour ever since, even if the rest of the times I’ve been on my own. Ever since that day, the words have steadily flowed through my mind down my muscles and into the instruments of my art: "The shortest poem I know is a name—the one I never got from you."