The sun was just about to set.

Her name appears, and my phone starts buzzing.
“What the hell?” – I mumbled
“Hey Girl”
– Come outside.
A brief silence followed, with this expression on my head:

She hangs up, I walk downstairs like a hobo – shirtless, with the cheapest shorts I had from my closet. I open the door and cross my fingers that I didn’t develop mental diseases which would cause hallucinations like that.
The second I stepped out, She appeared in front of me with grey hair, a pajama-set and the ugliest shoes my eyes ever witnessed.
“Nice match”- I thought. Our outfits just couldn’t look any better.

It’s been a month since we last connected, it was a sort of detox for the mind’s health.
The last time we saw each other was on the exact same spot where She appeared, 96 days geleden¹.

All of this wouldn’t have been a big deal, if today wasn’t the day when I finished my first book in Dutch, The Alchemist – which is all about following the sings of the universe.
If you want to find your treasure, listen to the voice in your chest.
On that very day, the heart said it’s time to reach out and break the radio silence.
It was 8 in the evening, She came just a few minutes before I would’ve done that. The only thing I kept asking myself:
What are the chances?

The purpose of her sudden visit was still unclear, so we decided to go and discuss everything on the nearest beach. After putting on some finer clothes, I figured it’s the perfect opportunity to experience a bike ride with living luggage on the back.
Even if She stood still, it was just as fancy to navigate through the streets as if I was intoxicated.
Although I looked really hard, there wasn’t a single spot where we could intentionally fall, so we ended up at the lake unharmed.

It was just about time to have the talk, so I sat down on the left side of a bench and mentally prepared myself for the inevitable, but She decided to play guitar with my nerves instead:
“I WANTED TO SIT THERE!” – She remarked with a touch of fury at hand.
Being a male, the only proper response to that seemed to be a deep breath followed by a plainly fake smile and a series of gentle slaps on the remaining 70% of unconquered space on the bench.

“I just want you to know that you matter” – She began.
Sitting there, still a little confused – I turned towards her and started to listen.
During the next two hours She made me realize that it wasn’t one sided.
For the first time in 22 years, the imprint I made on someones sustained.
I tried many times before, but whoever I held close to me in the past forgot about my existence the second they turned their back.
But not her.

The Dutch weather expressed it’s empathy by tearing up a bit, casting a thick rainbow on the stretched landscape.
You know you’re a Lucky Man when even the sky starts sobbing on your warmest moments.

As the wind started to get stronger, it was time to leave and head back.
I had no clue what time it was, though with her it never matters.
The cold blows went through her bedtime clothing, causing her to freeze, to which the only possible reaction from a gentlemen like me was to shout inappropriate things on the street on full volume to tease her:
“MY TITS ARE FREEZING!” and “SHE SAID SHE ISN’T SURE ABOUT IT!”
You know well what happens when you declare that a Woman is not in the possession of all the facts (i.e. – She has been mistaken)
You cast hell upon yourself.
But the tradition of embarrassing each other in public had to be kept.

When I opened the door, I thought the surprise visit was over and soon She’ll drive away in the distance.
Plot twist: I was dead wrong.

Every time we wandered from one part of the house to the other, the distance between us grew slimmer.
If our hands didn’t touch here and there at certain moments, I would’ve been utterly confused by the ongoing events, but the saying about how the smallest spark can set an entire forest on flames seemed to confirm itself.
The more we talked, the thinner the barriers became.
At a rare moment of peace and silence, I would just stare at her as if it was our last minute before we join the dead.
She broke it with something slightly offensive, which ended up triggering a few gentle strikes of tickles, until both of us fell.
After the landing, She checked her phone; it was 2 am.

Time just can’t cease to fly with her.

At that moment, it wasn’t just us who fell, but the row of dominoes stacked by fate were already falling in masses.
It seemed to be something that couldn’t be avoided.

This is the point where my ability to answer with logic ends. The origin of these events are as complex to me as algebra is for a third grader. Fighting my own boundaries at these acts, I tried to find a way to show how much I care, but it takes time until I figure out how to express that.
When a sudden melancholy stroke her, the torment of having to witness her being in a state like that drove fear out of my presence.
At first, my mind couldn’t conceive anything greater than a kiss on her forehead, which turned into a hug, until we were wholly absorbed in each other – just like on the day we first met.

The book was still on the table, so I picked it up and opened it at a sentence I just read a few hours before all this happened. I placed it in her hand and stayed silent.

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

– The Alchemist

“Oh, so we’re going to argue again?”
– You just can’t stop looking at the rough side of everything, can you?
A broad smile signaled that She understood what I meant.

As we were sitting there completely blended, a strange feeling took over:
My mind was silent.
I wasn’t consumed in thoughts about the future, recalling the past or predicting the upcoming moments.
If peace was a source of light, I felt the sun in my head.

“Are you going to write about this?” – She asked
– Yea… When I figure out how to put something intangible on paper.

Even if you are good at weaving words, there are things you need to think about long and hard to be able to express them.

At those very moments of silence, it felt like the puzzle of Life solved itself.
The faith I have in unearthly things is extremely scant, but this one time the amount of coincidences involved in our case simply surpassed any reason or fact I could come up with to explain them.
Owning an identical scar on our knees, mirroring each other on the exact same places gives birth to doubt even in a heathen.

The rest of the morning went by experiencing a kind of connection that no other thing on Earth could ever bring to existence.
When the clock struck 6, the alarm went off and snapped us back to the real world.
How can 10 hours pass by under 10 seconds? – I wondered.
We could age decades just under a few seasons.
Both of us had to go to work, which meant the end of the sleepless leisure.

Before we left, I took a Polaroid picture of her; to forever preserve the memory of the day when the Little Bird who once flew away – came back.

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Take care,
Erik

12.06.2019 – Day 142

[Dutch Dictionary]
Geleden ¹ – Ago