Her fingers move up and down the neck with the nonchalance and silky smooth rhythm of an old master.  They don’t even seem to be touching the strings and frets.  The gentle yet commanded rise and fall of her right wrist, as sure and steady as a metronome, brings to mind the repetitive yet precise swinging of a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, each stroke as methodically beautiful as the next, the lost momentum subsumed by subtlety.  It’s like her entire body’s an extension of the guitar, and the rhythm seems to be rising from her feet like the duende of the flamenco maestros Lorca knew so well, slowly, steadily swelling up and swathing the rest of her person, guitar included, ‘til it rushes over like a wall of water, cascading onto the crowd and drowning their inhibitions, replenishing minds and bodies of those fortunate enough to bear witness.  People freeze mesmerized.   It is narcotic.  I am numb. 

The music permeates each crack and crevice in the cramped but intimate environment, adapting, flowing, pooling in places.  It assuages me, and I feel its crescendo in my chest.   The vibrations emanate outward, and I close my eyes and let it take its course.  I feel like I’ve just bathed in the sounds, senses so overrun and saturated that wires become crossed, as if I’m feeling the music in a textual sense.  I stand and listen, eyes closed, ‘til she finishes her set, three more songs, but all I needed was that first.  I squeeze and shuffle and push ‘til I’m through the door and into the bracing autumn night, that silken sliver in the sky moonblue and pulsing, dappling the sidewalks with specks of ardent luster.

The Square looks electric, the shop windows offering warm, comforting light as throngs of people skip and laugh and hoop and holler, glad to be among family and friends and within the confines of Oxford’s most famous attraction.   Cars and trucks pace leisurely, and male occupants scan the streets, threshing the action and whistling at numerous Delta Queens who dot the sidewalks like freckles on a face.   I pass Archie in front of Ajax, say hello, and continue on my way, weary of hassling the patriarch of America’s First Family of Football. 

I walk on, past the Roundtable, a few boutiques, and approach the crosswalk below City Grocery.  I see a girl I used to know up on the balcony, surrounded by people who look cooler and more cultured than I, and pick up the pace before making a sharp left.  I am beneath them now, literally, and when I look up I hear that voice I’ve recreated in my mind so many times to the point of almost not recognizing it, like repeating the same word over and over ‘til it loses all meaning.  I walk on and look right to see a dimly lit Square Books, the newest and hottest novels and cookbooks adorning the windows.  I wait for a few German cars commanded by sneering teens to pass and cross the street in front of Village Tailor.  They do and I, too.

A group of young college girls come stumbling by in psychedelic sundresses, two practically carrying another towards a parking lot down the hill behind Neilson’s, probably to the ritzy but conspicuously named High Cotton townhouses beyond.  I light a cig and continue walking.  In front of Hinton & Hinton I’m jolted by the blare of a car horn, and suddenly hear a voice scream my name as the vehicle passes.  I look up in time to see two of my oldest friends and former classmates, Ryan and Jacob, as they roll by.  I wave and walk on. 

I head towards my car, which is parked in front of the Federal Courthouse, across the street from Boure and High Point Coffee.  Just as I’m opening the door my thigh buzzes.   I fish the phone out amongst keys and lighter and lint to find a text.  It’s her, and my stomach drops like something heavy and unbearable.  It rises then drops again.  I look at the number attached to the message over and over, hoping somehow it’s not really whom I know it is.  I don’t view the text.  Phone back in pocket, I get in the car, start it up and circle the square, turning off on South Lamar, doing my best to straddle the strictly enforced 30 mph speed limit.  I think of squared circles and Vitruvian Man and beauty defined and achieved.  I am thinking more and more about that message, and becoming less and less motivated to ignore it.  It’s from HER.  Why tonight, though?  It’s been over five years since that final blowout on Frontage Rd and even though she’s occupied my bandwidth and dreams ever since, I’m extremely hesitant to respond.  So naturally I write back, tell her what I’m doing. 

About a minute later another vibration communicates what I already know: I’m not going home.  I turn the car around at the BP just past Beanland and accelerate down Lamar, once again bound for the Square, like fate, or some world line unable to be altered.  I park behind Crème de la Crème and begin toward City Grocery.  Legs are wobbly.  I feel as if I just finished a marathon.  A decade’s worth of memories running from one pole of the emotional spectrum to the other flood my mind.  I am overwhelmed.   I am hesitant.  I pick up the pace.  My blazer feels constricting, as if it might strangle me, and I am already fumbling for the words that I know I won’t find, the words I never find with her.  ‘Her’ and ‘Here’ separated by an ‘e’.  Her middle name’s Elizabeth and now I find her in close proximity, within my circle of influence, and wonder about the significance.

I’m now in front of Proud Larry’s, without even a football field between us.  I’ve run through this potential over and over and over again the past few years but now I feel as if I’m stepping into uncharted territory, past some threshold.  I think of the double-slit experiment, how observation changes behavior at fundamental levels, and I completely understand.  I am totally unprepared and already regretting the decision to turn around.   I cross the street and walk past La Paz and now I’m back at Square Books.  I peak my head around the corner of the store, as if chasing something dangerous, and see the balcony, but she’s no longer there.  The men are, nattering and over-oiled, but she’s vanished.  I pace back in forth in front of a bulletin board chock full of flyers advertising upcoming shows around town, along with guitar lessons, lost animal notices, farmer’s market openings.  I check out a few and continue to stall.  I’m facing the board, back to the street, when I feel a tap on my shoulder.  I freeze and don’t immediately turn.  When I finally do, I see what I’ve been missing.  She’s just standing there.  In front of me.  In the flesh.  I consider pinching myself.  She wraps me in her arms and kisses my cheek.  Her hair smells so, so sweet.  Her gravity pulls so, so hard, like bordering some black hole that swallows light.  She radiates it, like the corona from some dead and desperate star, but is not the one at fault.

We small talk and fidget around the obvious, and just have to tolerate awkward silences and quick glances cast upon each other.  Words and truths unspoken but evident orbit us both, but eventually we find some semblance of comfort defying time and former distance.  We talk for a few more minutes and then she asks if I want to take a ride.  I say yes and mean it.  We cross the street and make the trek towards her minivan parked behind the Rib Cage.  My palms moisten.  I am alive.   We get in and decide on back roads.  It’s our tradition. 

As we cruise down East Jackson headed for Old Sardis she plays some tunes I’d never heard but like. The initial stiff, rather gauche atmosphere quickly melts into an ease that’d been absent since I lost her.  It’s fluid and comfortable and loose fitting now, and I lean back in my seat and feel at home. I look over and can’t help staring at flowing legs, her classically beautiful, refined features illuminated in the darkness by a natural light, a lambent glow she retains by birthright.  We cut the crisp Mississippi night like a blade through cake, and I roll my window down.  The whoosh of the air feels appropriate as we gently sail by timeless red oaks and soaring slash pines, the cool air filling the cab and soothing every inch of our bodies.  She looks over and smiles as we turn onto College Hill Road, and I instantly know where we’re headed. 

I feel this van is consecrated.  I look into her eyes and it’s as if I’m staring into Krishna’s mouth, as I see the entire universe.  I suddenly understand ‘as above, so below’ and something crystallizes underneath my consciousness, something that will take years to understand.  I think of mandalas and symmetry and individuation and wholeness. 

We drive on towards our turn, still a few miles up, and I feel her eyes on me while I’m looking out my window.  I do not know what her intentions are.  I do not know what my own are.  I do know that this is the same girl who has broken my heart so many times before.  She’s all I’ve ever wanted and everything I can never have.  I decide that I don’t want to think about these things right now and light another cig, staring at the filter.  I exhale in her direction and she looks angelic, a ring of smoke mantling her perfect head.   We are suddenly upon our turn, and she makes a sharp right that eases my body into hers.  I am awake.  I settle back into my seat, ask her to pull over so I can relieve myself then hop back in. 

We arrive at our destination; a long-abandoned set of railroad tracks separating two dense patches of woods.  This is the exact spot where I first kissed her that night so long ago.  I feel upon my skin what I will never have again.  I am sinking.  She leans into me with a kiss that reminds me why I can’t forget.  I pull her on top of me and she straddles my lap.  Our breathing’s heavy but her body’s light against my own.  We’re all over each other for a couple minutes and I begin to reach for the places that instinct tells me to reach for.  She grabs my hand and briefly pulls away.  She looks at me and flashes a mischievous but controlled smile that lets me know things aren’t the way they were, can never be against windy voids of space and time and Septembers of every year, the old-time step down a desperate street I’ve sentenced myself to inhabit. 

I long for the past but deal with the present.  We continue for a few more minutes and she climbs back to her seat.   Her hair is ruffled but glow intact.  She, this night, feels suspended, like we’ve achieved superposition, banished time to the physical realm.  It’s though I’m floating above myself, looking down on my body as I try to pause our fleeting time together.  It’s like trying to grasp a handful of saltwater, futile and fluid.  I’m having trouble believing this is happening.  I look at the digital clock on the van’s dash, away, back again.  The time remains the same.  I’m lucid but this is no dream.  I notice a distant look in her eyes.  She gazes past me, through me, out the window into the night.  I want to ask her what’s wrong.  I want to comfort her, tell her she’s the only one I’ll ever want, that nothing has changed for me and never will, that my love for her has endured and shaped the way I view everything in this world and beyond.  We are at once blinded by the night and crippled by our turbulent history.  Everything seems possible yet impossible simultaneously, and my cognitive dissonance regarding this beautiful creature only confuses me further.  She is my Uncertainty Principle, as I’ll never again know her position or momentum, simultaneously or separate.

I reach for her hand and she obliges.  I feel her smooth skin and caress it, trying to savor what I know will be our last night together.  There is someone else now who can give her the things I couldn’t, provide the things I neglected.  I cradle her head in my arms and stroke her silky hair.  I am overcome with regret and sadness because I know, I have accepted, that she is gone.  Over the years, I pushed her out of my life with petty indulgences and worthless obsessions. I am submerged.  And now it’s time to face the consequences, to watch as she becomes the night, scattered by my selfish current and whisked to a place both inaccessible to me and better for her.  I am aware.

 As we head back to town I wish I could infinitely extend these last precious moments.  We ride in silence.  I want to kick and scream and flail and stall.  I want to hold on.  As we pass the University on the right I’m reserved but as unprepared as ever.  It feels like we’re travelling at light speed, the passing cars and trucks fly by with cruel and profound efficiency, their lights seeming to run together, opalescent, pushing us ever faster to our inevitable conclusion, the penultimate sentence of our final chapter.  She seems to pick up the pace, the reflective strips center the blacktop merging and yielding to speed, the space between them superimposed as momentum fills the gaps, reminding me of relativity and our notion of time. 

We pull back behind Crème de la Crème and it’s time.  I am incredulous to this queer night.  I look at her and she looks back.  A kiss is given and received, and as I exit the vehicle and close the door behind me, she flashes me a willfully transparent smile. I peer through her, into her, and see that she is at peace.  She’s happier now, and though my own heartache will never cease, it comforts me to know that this girl who has watched me grow up and transform from boy to man, the same girl who resides in my dreams and is now but an afterglow in my waking life, will not just endure, but prevail.   I am on fire.  I radiate, electric.

– Will Westmoreland