Verona Conversation

In a small town, beauty is overrated

Here is what happened the other night. I meet him after a long time. Years. But he was there. In a book I read for 5 minutes at Verona landmark, Piaza delle Erbe.

I wonder what to wear. It is after all a date.

We never hug. Or it is always awkward. The hands are either too soon, late or never. So we grin hehehe.

We decide to walk down to the restaurant. It is a new place, as shiny as freshly minted coin.

Sitting opposite each other, we check the other out, after pushing the too cheerful vase of flowers aside.

He leans forward and winds his finger on a messy hair. We are growing gracefully, we both agree.

There is a melancholy jazz player playing. I play with a hairpin. Shall I wear it on my hair? I asked him and he said yes. So I wear it with careful carelessness.

You look beautiful, he tells me.

It was way back in school. He made a dashing Romeo and I made a vulnerable Juliet. His boyish charm and confusion added to the endearing nature of the Romeo in our schoolgirl hearts. 

The ridiculousness of the situation and me as Juliet added to my complete misery.

So I stood there feeling completely idiotic behind a flimsy curtain, on a stool stolen from the school convent and looked dolefully down at Romeo.

You look beautiful, Romeo said in unwritten Shakespeare words.

Only both of us knew it wasn’t at Juliet that they were directed at. It wasn’t even Romeo talking.

We both remember it simultaneously.

In a London Minute

Dear,

Lying in the darkness of my room, I think of you and London. There is always solitude in darkness.

When I landed at Heathrow, I was filled with apprehensions. What brings me here? What will I do here? What if you didn’t come to see me? What if you don’t find me in this sea of people?

When encircled arms met people who filled the seats around me on the plane, I repeated myself your name, which I had memorized. But when I saw you looking for me and when you wrapped me onto you, my relief was by sinking completely to you.

I like being found.

I liked your room. I especially loved the ledge where I could sit holding my legs near me and look out into the street. The fan that groaned in slow circles, it made me feel we were sleeping in Jakarta. Except that I couldn’t hear the traffic. Things were different and yet the same.

I sleep best when I sleep with my face in the curve of your neck. There were no nightmares and dream was a kiss away.

Do you remember how often we would turn off the alarm and go back to sleep? The alarm would be the signal for us if we were at the far ends of bed, to come closer to each other. Wrapping sleep bodies around each other and go back to sleep.

London.. I think I’ve fallen in love with the place. Or maybe with you, fallin all over again. I’ve fallen in love many times and with a lot of people. I’ve fallen in love with you, and then with different people, and yet I’ve always come back to fall in love with you again.

Royal Park, when you let me sit on your bag, so that I won’t get my jeans all wet, I felt I was in college. And when you sat down on the grass and run my fingers through your closely cropped hair, your hair felt softer anyway. Is this what lovers do? Apart from writing love letters, long hours on the phone, and furtive gropes in the dark cinema theaters?

Anyway, we weren’t lovers like that…

We were… we were the lovers who made no promises. We never talk of ‘remember when’ and ‘what-if’. We were lovers who walked and talked and laughed and giggled at people in the street who were weird and ate street food. We were lovers who met other people, never talked in long hours on the phone and have privacy in each individual. Not that kind of lover who constantly checking their spouse phone and asking ‘Where are you? Where have you been? And blah blah’

I trust him enough and just want to know what he wanted me to know.

When you whispered on the crowded tube that it was not as bad as the Kopaja busses, I could feel your smile on my body. I didn’t have to look at you to see that. I was stood there, as near as to you I could get. I could feel your breath on my hair. I never once looked up. I hope you were thinking of the past. This once we can behave like others. I was happier than I ever was. But I was sad too.

When the time came for me to leave and you asked me not to be sad, for we would meet again, that’s the closest to tomorrow and promise we made.

7 days, it seems like a minute now. In that London minute, everything has changed. I think I have left a part of me behind somewhere out there. Maybe in one of the street we walked. Maybe in one of the London Underground station. Maybe in one of the benches we sat. Maybe under the pillow on your bed, a little hidden.

As always and forever,

Me.