Long eyelashes

The woman turned to the man and said, "I can't believe it! I've never seen eyelashes this long, and the tips are bright yellow!" The man smiled, the kind of smile you get when someone you don't know smiles at you in a very warm way. "Are you serious?" she asked. "Let me look in the mirror!" he said. He went to the bathroom. When he didn't return after a while, the woman followed him.

He looked at his eyelashes in the mirror, and she looked at them from the side. The yellow tips weren't as noticeable in the bathroom light as they were in the sunlight. "Come on. Let's go inside and look again," the woman said, taking his hand. "I never noticed," the man repeated, smiling even bigger. "No one ever mentioned it before."

The woman was delighted, as if she had noticed a heartwarming detail on a street she passed by every day. But this time, it felt more special. She looked at the man's face in the sunlight again. He was looking back at her with the most peaceful expression possible. After looking at him a little longer, she planted a wet kiss on his cheek and said, "I hope you pass this on to your son!" The man mumbled something, then lay down on the bed and patted it, inviting her to join him.

A few weeks later, on the day they enjoyed one of the most beautiful lunches of their lives at the man’s father’s home, the woman watched the man exit his car to say goodbye. This time, she ignored his eyelashes. They hugged each other sleepily from having drunk too much the day before. They smiled, unaware that it would be their last hug.

After some time, the man disappeared into the woodwork. He told her a couple of times that he loved her, but what does love mean without action? In the meantime, she sang "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. She kept telling him he was a wonderful person, but is anyone really wonderful? Can Homo sapiens sapiens be wonderful after all this? The woman suddenly remembered how many ancestors had to survive to allow her to write these words. Too many contradictions were happening in the background. The woman took a deep breath, as she had learned from many practitioners and random people. She thought the only things she was sure about were her breathing and her heartbeat.

Is it too much to ask to be able to hug a loved one every day, to see the grumpiness on their face and not take it personally, and to move on? Bullshit! She wished she could go back to a time when there were no contradictions about where her home was. Would she ever be able to hug her own child? The child of her own blood? As she thought about all this, she found herself taking a sip of her warm beer while watching TV. She saw her man next to her, but she couldn't feel it.

They hadn't lived each day as if it were their last, but experienced whatever was in front of them. The woman boarded a train, as she always does, while the man drove toward home. They had different thoughts in mind.