Nowhere

Nowhere

Art
Kim Salac
Media Staff

It takes you three days to fall out of love with her.

On the first day, you remind yourself that you’re leaving. You’re graduating next semester, and there’s no point starting something now if she will stay and you will go. On the second day, you convince yourself that a girl as joyful as she is never far from a special someone. It’s certainly not you. Not with those earbuds in all day and your eyes directed at the ground. Not when you look at more people through your periphery than directly. Which makes it easy, on the third day, to stare into the mirror and tell the boy you see there that he’ll never be beautiful.

Before long, you forget what she looks like. It’s all watery, like paint so diluted that all that comes to mind is a bad facial composite.

And that’s it. The end.

You resolve to stop looking at her, to start pretending she doesn’t exist. You wag your finger at your heart. Hush, feelings, hush. This will go away in time. 

Before long, you forget what she looks like. It’s all watery, like paint so diluted that all that comes to mind is a bad facial composite. You might pull up her page on Instagram, late at night when wills are weak and silences are deep, just to remind yourself that she’s already happy without you.

So are you, you decide in the morning, the night’s despair seeming to set with the moon. You are content to walk from class to home and home to class with your hands in your pockets and your face turned to the sun. A flock of birds glides past over the tips of trees that have just begun to catch fire. They glow in the orange of basketballs and sunburnt cheeks. Like the first time you saw her, shooting hoops with her guy friends. 

They’re the friends you see her in class with. Those two. Over there. Raining sweat onto asphalt every time they shake their hair. She’d made them both keep their shirts on.

Someone ran a girl over on the crosswalk on Madison and Fifth the other day. You received a community alert about it, conveying sorrow and warning precaution. Yet, everyone goes on. 

If I beat you wearing twice the amount of clothing you are, you’d just be twice as humiliated. You remember her pointing with one hand and dribbling with the other. All ten rings on her pale, white fingers winked at you as you walked past.

The rest of the sidewalk past the cage-linked fence is monotone with movement. Heels first, toes flexed, everyone takes the same steps in different directions. Every line in the sidewalk looks like its mother. A car will stop to let you cross the street. Its headlights will feel like eyes as you watch your feet. You’ll imagine the impatient sigh of the driver. You’ll see his fingers drum on the steering wheel. He’ll mutter a curse to the lethargy of human flesh and bone when technology delivers you so much faster. Better. You speed up.

Someone ran a girl over on the crosswalk on Madison and Fifth the other day. You received a community alert about it, conveying sorrow and warning precaution. Yet, everyone goes on. Same as always. And so will you.

C’mon. Straighten your shoulders and mimic the man in white. It’s your turn now.

You see her for the second time on the same crosswalk, and she mistakes you for someone else. 

Oh, I’m sorry! she exclaims, fingers over her mouth. The sun catches the gold of her rings again. Her eyes are somehow golder. When they see you – like really see you – they sparkle with mischief and wonder and the promise of a scrapbook of memories. You see a room full of laughter in her eyes except it’s just the two of you, your eyes meeting across an ocean of space, and, somehow, it feels like an inside joke. It's campfires and the toes of two pairs of boots peeking out from beneath the same blanket. It’s the warmth of a mug being touched to your shoulder when you fail to see it the first time.

The third time you see her, you’re swaying like an anemone in your seat.

You can just imagine her picking up a FaceTime call from a friend at three in the morning because they’re struggling over the same assignment together – Try switching up the pointers and if you still can’t figure it out, I’ll come over. We’ll work on it together – said casually, like she’s completely comfortable being in the intimate spaces where someone eats and sleeps. Like she doesn’t even think about it. The way you don’t think about it when your knee brushes a loved one’s on the couch and not some stranger’s on the bus.

Suddenly, you’re not sure if you love her or envy her.

The crowd keeps you both moving, and it’s just the edge of the bandana over her hijab that brushes past your cheek, leaving behind the faint smell of imaginaries and what-could-have-beens. The bus she takes is going in the opposite direction of yours. 

The third time you see her, you’re swaying like an anemone in your seat. Someone has an umbrella clutched loosely between their knees. Most everyone’s heads are tilted down, like the weight of their thoughts are heavy. You understand. You want to lean yours against the window but then everyone will think you’re listening to sad music and pretending to be in a movie. And the bus jars. You wouldn’t be comfortable.

The phone feels like a kidney stone in your pocket.

The pair of friends sitting behind you are talking loudly about all the pictures they have of someone sleeping. You can't tell if it's a person or a pet. Then the bus hisses to a stop, and you forget why knowing felt so important two seconds ago. Because it's her, and a new friend that abandon their seats behind you. You startle since you hadn't recognized her voice--those fluctuating highs and lows. Sometimes life brings you around and around in circles, all to deliver you to the same useless end.

You realize she forgot her phone in the seat behind you—the one with all those sleeping pictures of that person/pet. It makes a dry gust of wind sweep through your ribcage and settle like dust on your bones. You take it home, and it dies on your bedside table that night while you stare into the mirror. You wonder about parallel lines and the like ends of magnetic poles.

The phone feels like a kidney stone in your pocket. She’s not in class today, and neither are her friends. At one point, you pull it out just to compare it to yours. Her lock screen is a picture of her and three other girls, all directing wide, beaming smiles at the camera. It makes you think of footsteps and muffled conversations from your neighbor’s parties upstairs. Is the reason you don’t have that because you don’t go to parties like those? Your lock screen is of a quote that you’re not sure you believe in anymore. 

The girl has this one picture you think of often. The background is of those dead brown leaves that hang below the green ones on a palm tree. The sun is hitting her skin just right and the ends of her bandana are caught in a breeze. It’s her eyes that draw you, though. They’re alight, full of daring as they look off to something to the side, like she’s already laughing at the next curve life will throw her way. If someone asked you what youth looks like, that’s the picture you think about. And it’s completely foreign.

You’re not quite sure how to describe the feeling this realization brings. You pick up a dead leaf and crush it in your palm. Not satisfying enough. The ping of a text message is tinny to your ears and there’s a moment where you’re sure you’re going to cry, and then you feel nothing at all. Don’t be stupid, you say as you blink gray out of your eyes. Have you ever even talked to her?

You don’t realize you’re digging your fingernails into her phone until it rings in your hand. You stare at the stranger’s name on the screen and you’re not sure why you pick up. You want to hear the voice of someone who cares about her.

Hello? the voice echoes. Habiba? Where are you?