The day I saw you

(in response to Its Face, a poem by Imtiaz Dharker)

The day I saw you. Daylight. Not by night in a dark mirror, backlit. By day. Out in the light. The light. The light. I do not want to write. Who is you? Me or you. Self or other. One day. The day. Did I only see you once, or was that the start. Start. Startle. Startling. Startling appearances. You appear so suddenly and I see you but not in daylight, in the dark. Where am I in all of this. Words, words, words. No coherence. I am fumbling my way, to where? Why do I not want to tackle this prompt heard on? To define you, to give a focus to my writing. I want to skirt around. I don’t know who I want to focus on. Or do I not want to focus on what comes to mind? Looking, out of focus, so easy to miss someone standing right in front of you, in front of me. Afraid to look, to feel. Constructing our own image of you from bricks discarded as not fitting our sense of me. To see. To remove the veil of self, projections. To see the other in their own terms. Abstraction. I fear to touch what I am feeling. To be moved by the other. I don’t like what I am writing. I am revealing too much even though I’m trying not to reveal anything at all. In looking at the other, we reveal ourselves. Talking in the plural. Find my I. I am afraid to look at people, to feel what I might feel when I do. To meet eyes, to have my eyes met. It freaks me out. I fear to see in case I am seen. Yet here I am writing, revealing. Why? Why am I doing this to myself? Not all of me wants to crawl under a stone and hide. I want to talk about the smoothness of the stone, the soft moss that covers it. Not to stay with the un-hiding parts of me, the parts that want to reach out. I’ll even talk about the dark earthy metal beneath the stone, the crumbling saturate earth. But not the reaching out, not the arms, the hands, the eyes, the stride. No movement towards you. I’ll just stay here and see you from afar but not really see you at all. What am I writing? I don’t know if I connect to any of this. I feel disconnected. Seen and not seen. Both are equally frightening, disconnecting. Here I am in this room writing. Head down. Not looking. Today is the day I did not see you, not see anyone. Too nestled in myself. Cradled. I feel too in need. I don’t want to write anymore. I feel sad.

I remember it clearly, the day your cloth fell off. That weirdly comforting cloth you used to disguise yourself. You wrapped yourself in it, so that others wouldn't see what you were hiding. But I know you were hiding from yourself. You weren't sure about what it was you were keeping secret. But all it took was a walk down an abandoned plane field. Overgrown tarmac, the scorching sun, cow pats like mines under your feet. One step to the left, a small jump to the right. Dodging the inevitable. Flo was by your side. The beagle you had to abandon to sad life of unkindness. You still think about her sometimes, although she is surely dead by now, you think of her pining on a cushion for your return. But you'll never go back. I think she knew it the minute you turned your back, sensed it, in that mysterious way animals do.

That was the day I saw you, truly saw you for the first time. Although we shared the same space for years, I only really saw you under that South American sun. You had opened a door, a window to your true self. There was an admission. Words never uttered before. "This is my own doing," you said.

Why does it still matter anyway? Why do we keep walking to the same junction where planes don't fly anymore, when you ultimately turn back and walk away?

It was a moment, a fraction of a moment, but I saw you. The day I saw you.

What do I think of when I remember the day I saw you? Is it a particular face or the season we where in? Perhaps it is the crowds of people who had gathered around outside the television shop? Surely it’s too early for a ball game? I had thought…but the fog of jet lag was muddling my thoughts & it’s always taken time for me to ‘come into focus’ in the morning, wherever I find myself in the world, Bristol or the Bronx. I walk closer & decide to pause for a while even though I’m aware that I’m probably going to be late now. How fast are the trains here? It shouldn’t take me too long & anyway, I’m known for finding it hard to get out of bed & moving in the morning, which should cut me some slack. I remember the train station from a 1970’s heist film - hijacked passengers suffer the fate of enforced captivity - & I pinch myself at where I’ve woken to begin this day. I’m soaking it all up…but as I walk closer, the thing that really does it for me is seeing the faces of the ordinary looking people commuters or locals - huddled together & seemingly transfixed by the images being relayed on the TV sets in the electrical shop window. I’m still not close enough to really see, but as I get closer I finally see the expressions of shock & amazement playing out on the startled faces, faces that are frozen in fear & disbelief, seemingly unable to take it all in… And then, I look out, right to the end of the street & I look up & see the smoke.