A Slow Erosion

It wasn’t the first time she’d been the right woman at the wrong time. There was no self-pity involved in this truth, just a minute erosion of innocence that was scarcely missed. She wore color, swirling turquoise and saffron around her until near misses at love floated rather than sank through her guts. She moved to Mexico where people danced their hearts back to love instead of perpetually lamenting their failures.

On Tuesday she read the lyrics of a song she thought might be about her. An opportunity both had seen but neither acknowledged until it weathered to nostalgia. Her mind played with the memory, tousling it into a torrid affair until she remembered that people rarely feel the same attraction for each other simultaneously. She considered her memories calmly and added enhancements only years can offer. Then she turned up the volume.

It was a beautiful song and she hovered on the updraft of possibility until the sun angled directly into her eyes. She blinked and looked away, feeling the light on her hair was a reminder to move along. The record played through to the end and she stood up, stretched and headed to the club.

The place had remained the same since she’d started coming years ago. The hardwood floor acquired a patina from heated soles gliding over it and the bar grew smooth from resting forearms. Like water inching its way through stone, time refined the room.

She had grown into herself here. Arms and legs, once gawky and alien to her, now moved with purpose to the rhythms shaping the air. Reaching back, she removed the band holding her hair and let it fall. She reveled in the cool hugging her shoulders, the way her flesh beaded beneath the sudden change.

Life had its way with her skin like it did with her heart. It moved silently, gracefully depositing experiences over her face in an array of smooth plains and rolling valleys. She explained time’s compassionate touch as a result of her ever evolving intimate cocktails.

Her lovers were exotic and common. She’d taken her first at twenty-five and approached sex like an open ended ticket, deciding when to leave when she felt a pull elsewhere. Sometimes she missed the transfer and ended up spending the night alone in foreign airports with no one to call and a hard floor of reality beneath her. It was alright; freedom trumped low grade loneliness. New opportunities abounded because she kept the life in her eyes.

Friends tried to enumerate the benefits of maintaining a permanent address with an accompanying person. She understood it, but the burn in her feet kept pushing her out of stability, towards the sea.

In another few years she would turn fifty. The number seemed noteworthy, she found herself writing it on bar napkins and frosted windows. It was a satisfied number—round and wholly aware of its significance. “Halfway to a century.” she’d think, driving to her next appointment. There was a roll to it and she drew it with her hips standing in line at the grocery store. It felt complete, a tiny dance contained in more hours and minutes than she could count.