Ah, Be Still, Foolish Heart!

He sees her there in the crowd, and when he sees her time shudders to a grinding halt. The world has gotten stuck in amber, all except for her.

The old man coughing in the grocery aisle is a statue.

The kids running ahead of their wearied mother in the produce section are paralyzed mid stride and their silent hollers are paused in their throats.

But she, the woman with the bandana and the overalls, she is still moving.

All others are thrust beyond the peripheries, they do not matter, they have never mattered, they will never matter.

She alone is real.

The solipsists believe the inward self is the only certainty, but they are proven wrong by her.

She is a certainty.

She is proven, by his rapt fascination.

She is glowing like a candle, and he is a moth.

This moment is all too--

*

“Dude, you gonna get that?”

One of the crew nudged him to sign for delivery.

He blinked and swallowed.

And signed.

And then, still in a daze, he looked for her again.

*

And there she is, wading through a still frame. Her skin is glowing and somehow he knows that if he were to draw close enough to breath her in, her smell would be intoxicating.

He can tell she is kind. Her eyes betray a depth of soul that makes all the other people he has ever known seem somehow less than human.

Less than her.

She is the new archetype of humanity, and of feminine beauty.

Her eyes radiate a peace so deep he can feel it all the way across the store and a confidence so fierce that he wants to look away but can’t help staring.

His brow melts and his face is washed of all other desires.

He knows she has the soul of an artist: healthy emotionality and empathy and courage.

It’s not that he cannot fathom any failings in her character, it’s that in her failings simply cannot exist.

She is beautiful by any measure, a universal truth.

Still she’s not the most traditionally beautiful woman he’s ever seen, but something about the balance of her features and the light in her eyes makes him realize she is the new absolute. Without any doubt, she is more attractive than any woman he has ever seen or any woman he ever will see.

No model, however celebrated, could radiate as much soul as this woman.

He wants to draw close, to draw up beside her and stay there in peace. He wants to stare and soak her up and kneel and offer his whole self or as much as she’ll accept.

He doesn’t want her, doesn’t want to have her…. he wants to be hers.

He wants to make love to her.

But he does not want to fuck her.

He wants to love her, in a sacrificial way: to give his whole body, his whole self, all and only to make her feel good.

She deserves to feel good and clean and pure.

He wants to bury his face between her legs and adore her, to just bring her to ecstasy and to drink her like air.

He wants to close all gaps between them, he wants to press the space away and wrap his arms around her.

He wants to pull her close and to ease inside her, not for the raw pleasure of it, but just to achieve utter closeness.

He wants bury his face in her hair and just breathe in forever.

He wants to give—

*

She stepped out of sight behind a pillar and he snapped back to reality. Time seemed to flow, he was able to breathe again.

The sounds of store— carts squeaking, registers beeping, voices chatting— these came back like a tidal wave upon his trembling ears.

He turned to the window, away from the store, and tried to get a hold of himself.

He sniffed, and let out a long, weary exhale with a low sigh: "What the fuck?"

He'd been acting insane.

It was like that woman had put a spell on him— hell, even thinking about that woman made his knees feel weak.

With no small confusion, he noticed the feeling of tears brimming behind his eyes. Why? He wasn’t sad, he wasn’t hurt.

Or was he? Could a human long for another, with such intensity that it hurt?

He swallowed, and noticed his mouth was dry, and as his pulse gradually slowed he realized: what he was feeling was madness. It could not be love, for he did not know her.

She was a stranger!

And love at first sight was a stupid fairy tale. He’d always thought so, in fact he’d always said that people who bought that nonsense were just conflating the terms of love and lust.

He had lusted before, of course.

But this wasn’t lust, not the kind he was used to.

His limbic system was all fired up, but it felt nothing like the usual lizard brain hum.

He didn’t want her for his own satisfaction. There was no sense of conquest or primal physical impulse here. No drive for a release of his own.

And, quite frankly, he’d seen hotter women in the store before.

Thinking back, he didn’t think he would even describe her as “hot”.

She wasn't a smokeshow or a scorcher or a baddie.

This, whatever it was, felt like an elevated need. Or perhaps, in a way, it was a much baser need. An impulse, not of mere flesh, but of flesh set to thinking: biology plus cognition... a driving instinct to remedy the human condition of inner isolation.

He was ready to sacrifice his own ego on an altar of service to her.

He wanted to give himself— his whole entire self, mind body and soul to a complete stranger. And that scared the hell out of him.

It made no fucking sense.

He felt a wistful, stupid sense of need taking root, and he tried to clamp his will away from this blind impulse.

But—

*

She steps into one of the check-out lines and into his view and whatever thoughts he’s been trying to hold, they melt away.

The lines aren’t terribly long, but when time freezes they become eternal.

He cannot bear the thought of her having to wait. He keys in his numbers on an open terminal and he beckons her over to his register.

Another woman who was further up in line notices, she looks indignant, she begins to say something about being there first.

But he does not reply, does not even acknowledge her attempt. In fact, he does not even know that she is there. The other woman, she is in his field of view, within earshot, but he can't possibly care. His ears are deaf and his eyes are blind.

It’s neither woman’s fault, it’s not even entirely his fault. His brain is glitching at the sight of this beautiful woman in the overalls, it’s like she’s overridden his code.

Something deep inside his biology is broken— or perhaps it’s working exactly as nature intended.

Or as God intended?

He realizes the truth: the Universe brought them together.

Before he ever saw her, he was an atheist. But now he is a believer.

He asks if she found everything she was looking for.

But he’s not really asking, his body is. But he’s not. His body is on autopilot, going through the motions.

Standing.

Scanning groceries.

Breathing.

His body is just meat and bones. Just cashier, helping a customer. But his eyes are soaking her in, his ears arewide open and his soul is bare.

He drops her frozen mangoes.

*

And time lurched forward as he looked down to pick them up. Gray dust from the floor had contaminated the crystal pure condensation on the bag of frozen food.

And might as well have been dust, standing in her presence. Like he was fouling up her pure waters.

When he bent to pick up the bag he realized his hands were shaking.

And he thought: She’s gonna think I’m on drugs.

He felt like he was.

*

He looks up at her deep eyes, and snaps back to the realer reality.

He may be nothing, but he’ll offer it all, because she is everything.

He asks if she wants a new bag of mangoes, she chuckles, and says it’s alright.

But it’s not. He can’t let her leave the store with floor-grit on her groceries.

So he wipes the dust and the cold and the wet on the leg of his pants. And continues bagging her food.

He asks her name.

And she says “Sage.”

“Sage, I like that name. Do you know the meaning?”

She smiles, and his heart does not melt, it sublimates.

“Yeah, it has to do with wisdom.”

The perfect name for the woman who made him a fool.

He asks. “Is it fitting?”

And she laughs, but doesn’t answer.

He hands her receipt, and stammers, a pathetic goodbye.

*

From then, whenever he closed his eyes he saw her. It was like his mind could not bear to witness the distance between them.

He knew on a conscious level this was obsessive.

But he could do nothing to get his brain back on the rails.

He felt like he was short circuiting.

But the escape was a relief in and of itself.

Back home, his wife yelled at him, like usual.

He hadn't loaded the dishwasher right.

She insulted him, like usual.

He looked ridiculous--laughable-- in that shirt he liked.

What the fuck had he been thinking, buying that?

She scalded him with her contempt, like usual.

Nobody liked him, and everyone wondered why she was with him to begin with.

And all her spit and all her venom and all the rage she threw at him, these things ran down his shoulders to puddle around his feet.

Her hell could no longer bring him to boil, and he gave her no fight.

For he had no will to bristle, resigned as he was to pine for his unattainable and unshakable fantasy.

Sometimes, when he thought of the woman in the overalls, he thought about how he'd throw it all away for her.

Then he'd laugh at the thought. Throw what away? Garbage and rot that he'd never wanted to keep...

Still, numb as he was to the poison within their marriage, he began to hate being home even more than he had before.

His weekends were restless, because away from work there was no chance of seeing the woman who'd captured his mind.

At least, when he was on shift, he might see her. He might catch a glimpse of her, he might hear her voice.

He knew, without a doubt, that he'd be happy to live for her. But he felt it, in the pit of his stomach, a gnawing insecurity: she could never be happy with him.

That was for certain, even if it wasn't true.

He used to think he was a good man. More than that, he used to think he was a worthy man.

Or, he used to think that he had something worth offering: himself.

But then, even that small confidence had eroded.

The years of derision whittled away his sense of worth. He had no honest pride.

There was only one relief from the trap he occupied, in his loveless, sterile home.

Smooshed between abuse from his wife and yearning for a life that could only ever be a dream, he cared for his son.

This, fatherhood, was his only true joy.

And it was his greatest obligation.

So after each shift, he'd drag himself home with a groan. And he'd hunker down and be the best dad he could-- despite the marital storm he'd rather not weather.

Then the next shift, he'd ride to work with a smile.

And one day, he worked up the courage-- not from confidence, but from desperation-- to ask the woman in the overalls to spend some time with him.

He simply knew, he couldn't go on wondering and dreaming. He had to be honest and that meant being upfront.

He knew, in his beaten heart and his broken psyche, she'd say no. She'd see him as he was, a wasted man, and she'd rightly draw away.

But, he thought, if he said it all just right, then at least she'd take it as a compliment.

Putting one brief smile on her face was the best he could hope for.

*

Her eyes are like pools, deeper than space.

And the whole world stops spinning, just like the first time, just like every time.

And he is satisfied, simply to stand before her.

He knows in his ruined heart, that he could never tire of her gaze.

He cannot remember what he's said-- whether it was what he'd rehearsed in his mind, or something that's risen up unplanned.

But she is smiling, and to him, that is everything.

She says, "What's your situation? Are you available?"

His hopes falter, "I don't know. I'm... I'm trying to make it work with my son's mother. For his sake."

A worry line creases her brow. He feels her empathy, her sincerity, like the warmth of a hearth. "Do you think that's the right choice? He'll be able to see that you're unhappy. Kids are perceptive."

So is she. He doesn't think he ever came out and said he was unhappy...

But if it's obvious to her, it will be obvious to his son.

He knows she's right, knows it on every level of his thoughts-- the surface level appeal to logic, and the deeper knowledge of the soul.

The truth makes him want to cry.

Wisdom, indeed.

Her name fits, more than ever.

He feels the universe pulling him to the healing break, but he hesitates.

"I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you must be right. But. I grew up in a single parent household, and I don't think I can let my son feel that hurt."

Her eyes say he'll feel it anyway. Her eyes say he'll feel it all the worse, if dad is fool enough to stay.

But she nods, and that is a kindness. That is mercy.

Those deep eyes are mirrors, he can see himself the way she sees him.

He knows, that she knows he is afraid.

He asks her if they have a chance.

She says, "Maybe. You never know what the future holds."

And there he stands at a windswept crossroads. He wants to throw it all away for her.

The thought of breaking away from his stale and battered life is enough to make him giddy.

He wants to be hers, more than anything.

But he still does not believe that his all is enough for the woman in the overalls.

Still, he know he deserves better than the misery at home, at this point it would be a relief even to be alone.

She is right, of course. He is not happy.

And he should leave-- if not for Sage then for himself.

But at the brink of a needed change, he remembers the way he felt when his own parents split. He hears his son's wail, imagined but louder than a siren in his ears.

And he keeps trying to make the broken thing work.

***

***

Author's note: Fictional, but from my own experiences.

Also, this writing is fairly experimental. The shifting to present tense with with Sage is deliberate, it's supposed to be jarring, to emphasize the currents of his mania. The shifting to past tense when he's away from her is supposed to feel grey and detached by comparison. I don't know if it works. Wide open to feedback!