The Woman on the Street

I was talking to a woman I met in the street, and I would like to say I don’t usually do that, but I can’t, because I do.

She looked extraordinary, like anyone with one eye bright blue, the other emerald green, and she was extraordinary, because she shouldn’t have been there, the earth had called time on her, but there she was anyway.

She was dressed like she was going to a 1960’s peace rally, and she probably was, in her mind, and there’s nothing really not to like about that, nothing at all.

I knew, I’d heard, she spoke extremely selectively, in a whisper, sometimes with days, sometimes years, between sentences. I don’t know why, maybe she was thinking what to say, maybe she just didn’t do small talk, she had cut it all out.

I must have walked by her a hundred times or more, on the way to the shop to buy cigarettes and sherbet, and always quietly said hello, and the most she gave back, once, was the tiniest of smiles.

Maybe this day I didn’t see her at first, because I didn’t think she was here anymore, but there she was, younger than before, her hand on my arm, her eyes on mine, unblinking, stopping the world for a moment, and then she leaned to me, her face next to mine, almost touching.

“Whatever the times, you always have choices, whatever is happening, you can decide who to be, and how to be” and as she said these words, speaking into my ear, it seemed like they were typing on a blank page in my mind.

“I don’t care what you choose, it’s for you to care, just know you are not at the whim of the world, you hold your life in your own hands, you can change yourself, just like that, and it starts with what you choose, what you decide.”

Then, before I abandoned my trip to the shop, and instead ran home to get these words down, she drew back, one hand now lightly on the back of my neck, the other brushing across my forehead, her eyes on me again.

“For what it’s worth” she said, her face lit by the winter sun, “I choose love, what about you?”

I wish you had been there, Dear Reader, so just imagine you were, her eyes on you, her voice in your ear, asking, “What about you?”

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