let go


Waiting for a stranger in a strange place with a strange smell and the thing that strikes me is human frailness, human weakness... I see no strength in people including myself and I want to reach out to the tragic and console them and cry for all the bad things we've done and seen and have had done to us.
            The stranger arrives and looks more beautiful than I remembered. The thoughts of weakness and suffering temporarily depart and we make our way, like young lovers in love, to a restaurant. I feel a sense of amazement that she has come to my part of the city… we’ve only met once and she trusts me enough to come to my area.
Her confidence overwhelms me as she speaks out powerfully to everyone and anyone she encounters. She requests things that normally people would not request… two courses at the same time… she is tiny, beautiful, and fierce. She is fourteen years younger than me, speaks three languages, and has travelled all over the world. Fourteen years my junior and she makes me feel like an uncultured little boy.
Yet, later, after we’ve walked around the neighbourhood and had wine on the pavement outside of a bar, she sends me messages to tell me that she loves talking to me and that she feels confused because there is such an age gap and yet she feels something. I play the hypocrite and tell her not to think… the very thing that I do incessantly about such situations.
I know it is disconnected… I know I need to let go before my hopes grow.

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