Sanctuary

She’s here.

Struck dumb, I stand in the way of the customers who obey the barista calling out names assigned to steaming half-caff, double pump espresso mocha latte-chinos. Yet I cannot move, my own Grande 4000 calorie treat sweetly scalding my trembling fingertips, now forgotten in my hand.

She’s here. I blink and she doesn’t disappear. She really isn’t an apparition; one of the many faces of her peeking at me in a storefront reflection. She’s not the familiar ghost that’s been haunting my periphery for the past twelve years. At this moment, while the cup in my right hand begins to melt away my fingerprints, she sits across the room, as if she’d been waiting for me to turn and see her.

I almost didn’t come. Busy dropping off the children at school, PTA moms vying for pieces of my calendar, manipulating commitments for this and that, Thursday mornings are a chore and I am usually late and usually find peace here with my coffee alone. This shop is my sanctuary away from the husband I took because she had disappeared along with my secret. I had put the yearning away, closeted my truth for a chance at what my father would call a real life. At times, I nearly succeeded.

She is watching me get bumped and nudged by the busy patrons reaching around me for their coffees at the bar. I am aware of the glares. Can’t they see what’s going on here? Sure, they can hear that crazy heart pounding over the menagerie of commercialism swirling around me. Somehow my shoes have become one with the floor. My legs are concrete in my shoes. I am a broken stone effigy of a person holding a latte.

Memories envelope me, blur my vision. I am no longer in my neighborhood coffee house, but in another universe. The time when I felt her voice on my throat and the scent of her permeated my skin. That amazing, perfect world where we believed in each other and in forever. That life yet unshattered that I lived within.

It had been another lovely evening. We were strolling across the campus, chatting and nodding amicably to passersby. My elbow tingled from where it would bump perfectly into her swinging arm. We were not actually touching, of course. But her easy laugh and the way I leaned my neck toward her when she spoke; we were not fooling anyone.

Months after then, we were alone in a room. The daylight grew, but she had drawn the curtains so there was only a thin ray of light revealing the dust particles gliding lazily on the air. Her strong, square hands compared to mine in those rays. The particles swirled mindlessly around our naked thoughts. I had pressed my back against her chest then. We were as close as physically possible, her face in my hair. She simply whispered my name into my ear. I can feel it in there now.

Times beyond that, there were fights and accusations. Misunderstandings leading to mistrust and passion. The fire in her eyes makes me tremble now. The brokenness, the deep and bottomless wanting. Making Up. The piece of me still holding the latte gives a distant half-smile. I’m not all there — I’m still making up. A shiver runs through me. People are staring. With an imperceptible shake of my head, I try to remember to be angry. She left me, I think to myself, and I relive it all over again. She had to go. I had to stay. We’ll write, we promised. Just for a little while. I’ll wait for you, she said. I will love you for the rest of my life, I declared.

These things happen all the time. People grow apart, paths shift. Yet it was so much more than that for me. I had washed her into me like the surf in the sand and when she was gone, I was left sifted, ragged, and gritty. She’d written me for a little while. The yellowing proof that she did remains entombed on a deep shelf in my closet behind my long underwear, for those cold winter nights. Her last letter to me reads, “...I gotta go now, babe. I’m sorry I can’t write more often. Just know that I love you wherever I am, with everything that I am.”

After that, my letters to her were returned with a big “RTS” written on them. Was that scrawl left by her hand? I couldn’t be sure. Was she simply dead or did she decide to stop loving me?

Over the years I came to an understanding of sorts that she wasn’t worthy of the likes of me. I told myself I had deserved better. I wore my “I’m Fine” face, by my soul was forever altered. I had been utterly squeezed out. It took me years to gather myself up, but like a tube of toothpaste, once it’s out you can’t scoop it back in again.

This woman had looked at me and loved what she saw in the depths of my being. She saw my broken and vulnerable and loved me. I know she loved me and I know she disappeared. And right now, she is no longer in my past but she is standing up. She is looking directly at me while my heart is on the floor, and I am coming undone all over again.

Her beautiful, timeless face is unreadable. For a wicked moment I am convinced she will turn and walk out of this coffee shop to disappear all over again. A figment of 12 years of yearning after all. I am still stuck between reality and what will be and folks are obliviously going about their lives around us. We are facing each other across the room. Like the wild, wild west, the “We-oww We-oww” showdown leaves crazy echoes through my head but my itchy trigger finger reminds me of the burns I am enduring for the overload to my brain. I look down at the cup, half expecting my hand to be fully engulfed in flames, but it’s merely a cup so I reach to set it on the busy counter.

When I turn back, she is with me. I am looking down at her shoes. A tiny hysterical giggle escapes my throat. Converse high tops. A conversation over shoes a million years ago. This is my “Her.” Mine. My eyes slowly travel to her face where she is already busy knowing me. Again. Some more. But where is my anger? There is only relief. Dammit. To again be near her. To know the pores of her skin, the new flecks of grey at her temples, the breath that’s touching her lips. Dear God, I may faint. My body hums, resonates toward her like a thirsty flower faces the crushing rain. Please help me. My ancient facade slipping away. She is near me and I am Home.