Her hands were rough and dirty; she put down the left one without thought on the paper I was sliding across to her. It was an honest mistake. I’m not sure if it was hers or mine, only that there was a mistake in the passing. Perhaps I should have left the edges of it aloft, or maybe she was supposed to lift it with fingertips from the glass. I’m not sure where the error, but it changed things. It changed the way I looked at her and she at me. Our eyes were closed to one another, though we blinked in earnestness. But even in our blinking did I discover that it wasn’t that she couldn’t see me. No, she saw me clearly. It was that she didn’t like what she saw. There was something about the way I shifted my feet, the way my hands were grazing my pockets. I wanted my hands to be put away but knew too well the message it would send.
I don’t remember looking in her eyes. Surely I did. I never don’t look into someone directly. But the thing is, she shines. My light, well, while it’s not broken, it’s just busy with the business of illuminating all these shadows. So, somehow, maybe I could have turned that light away from the darkest corners for a moment, from my preoccupation, as she dropped down her left hand. Had the corners been aloft, her eyes would have been pulled to mine. There we could have spoken the language of silence, and there, as with all those with whom I shine, she could have seen the truth. And my truth is that I’ve never known a shadow to be cast without first the presence of light.
(January 7, 2008)
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