Under the Paper Moon

Him.

John Hopkins Hospital.

She was temptation. And I was the angel that fell from heaven.

It was a sunny afternoon in Italy. She walked into my small bookshop that had a derelict wooden sign outside of its windows: Paper Moon Bookshop. I waited at the counter near the cash register with a book in my hands. I scanned the page quickly, earnestly consuming the text.

I didn't notice her at first. She didn't notice me either. Instead, she circled the small bookshop and searched for something new to read. Her fingers caressed the spine of dozens of books on the shelves. Touching the books, she looked like she was skimming water with her hands as she leaned across a boat.

My bookshop was quaint. With books stacked on the floors and more novels littering the shelves, the aroma of the shop replicated that of a sacred museum with bookshelves for statues and chipped wall-paint for masterpieces like the Guernica. She began reading after carefully selecting the readings of Voltaire. Her eyes scanned the page with ferocity. The soft pages, numbed by the weight of her fingers on each line, were her god and she praised it and prayed to it like it threatened the end of the world.

In that moment, I finally found her.

I walked from behind the cash register to the other side of the room where I ordered the books that were displaced by the hands of forgetful readers. I looked up as I pressed the spine of a book into place, filling the empty spaces in between each piece of literature. I saw her and asked if she needed help looking for more books.

"There's a section with Locke, Machiavelli, Marx, and Habermas around the corner there."

She turned and smiled stolidly, "Thanks, but I think after delving into this one, I'm not sure I want to read more."

"Why is that?" I leaned my body towards her, using a pile of books stacked to my waist as a fulcrum. She closed the book and squinted her eyes as if the sun was interrupting her view. It wasn't. She was thinking.

"Politics," she began, "or political philosophy is dire. But it is also strained and nuanced in a way that feels futile. Aristotle provided the philosophical politics for 19th century thinkers. Plato influenced western ideology. And Descartes influenced modern philosophy so deeply that we still debate about it. But it doesn't matter. Their thoughts didn't last and much of their philosophy aided in the death of the poor, supported the enslavement of some, and damned women for autonomy. It just seems like we live in a cycle of disappointing leaders. There's no escape. I want someone to do more. I want passion in someone eyes, not lust for power. I want debate until the subject is exhausted from all angles. I want--"

"You want to stop being disappointed."

"Yeah, but I won't." She shrugged her shoulders and moved to another section of the bookstore.

Like a lost puppy, I decided to follow her. We discussed politics, philosophy, science, and literature in the next section of the shop. We celebrated film, sculptures, classical music, and photography. While under the spotlight of a paper moon that hung like the Colossus of Rhodes from the ceiling, I asked her to meet again. I took the chance.

"Bring a bottle of wine here. The finest Merlot you can find," I said with a flirtatious smile.

She nodded and exited the store as the sun began to set. The golden hue of the evening crowned her skin with the lurid colors of the horizon. I watched her leave through the store window and I could've sworn --

Her.

60 years later.

Many people like the idea of soulmates. The idea, while banal, comforts those who dare not walk this earth alone. That is, spiritually and physically alone. Many people call to their lovers with a tongue laced in possessiveness. Without thought, they earnestly and innocently call one another by two names: my person. It isn't cruel nor malicious to devour the saccharine utterance of emotional security.

My.

Person.

I don't have a dog in this fight despite my insistence that these words touched by the same tongue are in defense of territorial love. It's just that I don't think of him as a first and last name doused in a possessive adjective. He's not my soulmate; he isn't my person either. No, rather, he is the light from the sun, the rain that falls on my balcony where I read, the petals of my flowers, the blood in my veins, the anger that rises in my throat, the feet that I walk on, the red in the wine that leaves its mark on my lips, and the paper moon we used to dance under. He isn't the romantic love I expected to behold. It is much deeper, almost spiritual; he isn't mine.

He's an extension of me.

So after that night -- the night where darkness encompassed our gaze and the sky was littered with stars while the moon hid under its dark blanket, only daring to show a curved, devilish smile to the world -- I felt amputated. He died in John Hopkins Hospital one night many, many years ago.

Muscles tearing under the knife.

Bones cracking and pulled apart.

Blood spilling into drains that consume it with darkness as a side-dish.

He was amputated from me.

I could only think of the paper moon, the spilled wine on our first date, and the street corner where he sang my name just to find my silhouette in my balcony.

I didn't care about missing him. Bereavement was the joke of the century to me. And the flowers, food, and condolences found the back door to my consciousness. The wound is salted forever. It is futile to pick each grain from it. Instead, I was infuriated. I wanted to tear the sky into small pieces and blow it back out into the universe like spreading the seeds of dandelions in one breath.

On the bad nights, the ones where The Legend of the Drunken Master, pizza, and wine could not help my emotional convalescing, I fell upon his bookstore at odd hours. With his ghost, I grasped onto him and danced about the room. It was pathetic. You could smell the loneliness on my breath. I was a miasmic swirl of sadness.

It took a long time before I forgot about the small moments we had. I don't know why, but I think about the first date we had upon the thought of him.

I think about the wine.

The paper moon.

Our dance.

Time doesn't heal like they say; it only lends a hand in forgetting. One year after his death, I forgot the way he smelled. Five years passed, I could only recall his eye color because of the pictures I saved. Then ten years passed and I forgot the way he danced when he cooked. Funnily enough, I just can't seem to forget about the first time we touched in that bookstore.

Time doesn't heal; it only helps us forget; but it doesn't erase the smothering feeling of being loved and loving someone in return.

Them.

She knocked on the door of the bookshop at eight at night. The blanket of darkness intimidated her as the cold wind flew through the spaces of her clothes. She waited for a moment, stomping her feet as she shivered. In her left hand, she held a bottle of Merlot as requested by him. She knocked again and he appeared from the back of the store at the window. He waved and welcomed her inside. They talked for a moment: she was the confident speaker and he was the timid creature following her words. Under the paper moon, a single table with candles, wine glasses, and pizza circled the surface. They sat and laughed and talked and exchanged awkward glances. While he tried to explain his passion for his little bookshop, he spilled the bottle of Merlot on a nearby copy of Wuthering Heights. His cheeks ran red while she grabbed a towel and made a joke about the price of the book to lighten the nervous tension.

The night fell deeper into twilight. With a record player that he had played, they danced under the paper moon of the bookshop. Spilling from the speakers, Ottis Redding sang "These Arms of Mine." The scene appeared like something from one of those romantic movies. It didn't seem real. But their hands touched. Skin pressed against the other. And the stars remained unmoved. It was cheesy; the type of cheesy that would churn the stomach of cynical critics of saccharine pictures. But it didn't matter in that moment because they were locked and synchronized with the same movement, breath, and ardent joy.

***

For a moment, they sat with a beer under the balcony of her apartment. She adjusted her jacket and pressed her lips against the bottle.

He spouted nervously, "I had a really great time."

"Me too. I love your bookshop."

"I think there's something beautiful about loving books. It isn't like loving movies where you can quote it the way actors speak or visualize it the way the camera moves. It's like owning a world. Or it's like holding a world in your hands. And this world expresses the colors inside of you."

She pulled her hair behind her ears, placed the beer on the ground, and walked closer to him. "It's like walking around with your heart in your hands."

"Yes," he murmured as she neared.

She locked eyes with him for a moment, then turned her head. She wasn't ashamed nor shy. But he looked at her like he was looking through glass; she didn't like that he saw through her. He invited her to one more beer, but she held her hand up and gently declined. Turning away, she thanked him.

"You sure you don't want one more?"

"If you had that paper moon, I'd be a sucker for you right now."

He twisted his heels in the gravel and turned, walking in the direction of his bookshop. Hours later, he stood under the balcony with his hands around his mouth; he shouted up to her. The light of her room flashed on and she walked to the edge of the balcony.

Infuriated, she yelled back, "Shut up! Wait? What are you doing?"

He held the bookshop's paper moon over his head and said, "Do you want to dance?"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "You can't just yell at my apartment in the middle of the night!"

"I'm sorry! I took some liquid courage."

"Dear god," she groaned and turned away to go inside.

***

It took some serious wooing to get him in her good graces after he shouted at her to dance under the paper moon. But their love story exceeded the first date mishap. It was just another chapter in their story.

But they lived in one another's memories. They existed as some extension of the other person. For her, it was nice to think that she was the last thought that walked through his mind before he left this earth. For him, it was nice to think that she thought of him as an extension of herself.

Extension (noun): a part that is added to something to enlarge or prolong it; a continuation.

He didn't live to see the age of 30, but she continued his life with her own. He lived in her veins as the part that enlarged her morality, prolonged her capacity to love; and continued the life he was supposed to have.

Love stories (oh those love stories we ache to consume with eager ears) are an extension of humanity. It lives in her, him, them, and us.

___

As always, thank you for reading. Any and all tips are deeply appreciated :)