beautiful man playing the harmonica

 beautiful man playing the harmonica

   Strolling around in the after hours, I decide to sit down at the first comfortable looking porch on sight, to write a letter. Old apartment building, windows all black, has a nice little lamp that turns on as I sit down, like for me only. 
   “Thank you, little lamp”
   Scribbling around at the paper, not really making sense of my words, I begin to notice the distant sound of a harmonica. Figured I was finally getting paranoid, for the sound would become louder and louder, getting closer and closer — soothing, in a way, but also piercing and loud and the most somber. The context of it all also didn’t help: a girl alone in the night; it was a dangerous neighborhood; I was running away from home. But as the source of the sound comes on sight, slurring down the lane, my heart stops shivering.
   A beautiful bard he was, lost in the blues like Little Walter, playing to none but himself. Noticed me looking, came to finish his solo a little closer, and sat beside me. A mysterious one he was, and maybe I was too, for we didn’t say a word to each other, just looked at places — at the houses, the asphalt, the big black night sky. In spite of that, not with shyness, but because the scene was much too appropriate for the pretension of a long lasting friendship, as an assortment of memories inside a single scene, and that we were living, and that should not be disturbed.
   After a few minutes, though, I can’t help but turn my head and take a better look at him, find out he's even weaker, already looking at me, piercing my eyes with his own eyes like arrows, like a man-Artemis, brownish, golden, copperish — in some places, in others like caramel —, boy hunter, kind killer, reaping my soul while praying.
   Felt uneasy, looked away, heart racing and stuff like that. With the corner of my eye I could see him fiddling with the harmonica. His fingers bony and long, his hands gray and black under le petit soleil. But I hadn’t yet ruined the moment, for he was smiling. I was smiling too. It’s good to be young sometimes and just allow yourself to blush a little when a pretty boy looks at you, even if you’re trying to become philosophy, be as living-art under the moonshine.
   “You know,” he said, his voice a little hoarse from lack of use “one day I’ll buy a harp.”
   I smiled a little larger and replied,
   “One day, I’ll buy a french tulip.”
   We got up, said our goodbyes, and never saw each other again.