Some Other Yesterday, Some Other Tomorrow

I wonder where you were going in such a hurry when I passed you walking on the opposite side of the street yesterday?

You always did have that purposeful look about you. Even as a little girl you seemed like you were in a hurry to get somewhere.

I knew how important it was for you to be on time. When you had no particular place to go you still kept to some tight and mysterious internal schedule. It was as if you feared being late for a vague appointment or assignation that was loaded with hypothetical possibility. I suspected that your constant movement was driven by the certainty that somewhere –someplace other than wherever you happened to find yourself– something was happening that you couldn’t bear to miss.

But what am I saying? I never understood what was going on in that pretty head of yours.

I sure did find you fascinating, though. There was always something happening in and behind your lovely eyes, and there were an awful lot of nights when I laid awake trying to imagine what you might be thinking. Every once in awhile I’d get a little glimpse –or, rather, you’d give me a glimpse; you’d choose to reveal something.

Those moments felt like offerings to me, and I used to collect them and try to piece together a portrait of who you might really be. Sometimes it felt like I was getting close, but then you’d give me some new fragment that didn’t fit. And you never did stop moving, which made it hard to keep you in focus for any length of time.

I had places to go myself eventually, of course. No place special, really, when all was said and done. My destination was ultimately the sort of bland constellation of compromises that is most people’s destination.

I can’t decide if you were lucky or not, but you were one of those people for whom all would never be said and done. You’d say so yourself, in fact, and I can still hear you say it: Never.

Never, never, you’d say.

Never, never, never.