Déjà vu

    Today I bumped shoulders with this girl on the street. She had nothing of muse, nothing ethereal, just a little something here and there of alternative. My eyes were quickly drawn to the turtleneck under a short but beautiful string of pearls. There was also a pair Ray-Ban Caravans laying on top of her head, like the one I had once gifted a dear friend many years ago. Her clothes were all pristine black, and her face carried a kind of smuggish decisiveness not necessarily unlikable, but deeply respectable. Something not even her short stature, or the way she walked wobbly, like a penguin, could take away. In fact, her presence was of a giant’s, and the mere sight of her was enough to take my breath away. That’s why we bumped shoulders; I got lost in her; though none of us seemed to mind.
   “Sorry”
   “No problem”
   “Have a good day”
   She smiled then, but more than cordially. She smiled like when you meet an old friend, despite the triviality of our interaction, and how rapid and easy it was for us to part ways. She looked at me and I looked back at her, and there was a kind of ideal communication, impossible to decipher in real life logic, before the cordiality took place, and I watched her back as she walked away.
   Later on, thinking about that face that, now, after digestion, felt so familiar, I began to dig deep within the grave of my memories, and in so many occasions now I could point out those eyes, looking straight into mine, while I also looked their way. Soon, many moments of bumping shoulders were relived, and in all of them there she was, with her giant-like, preeminent presence, smiling at me. I saw her in parks, in drugstores, in house shows all over the country; I saw her at my building’s stairs, I saw her at my favorite bistro, I saw her smoking weed in a parking lot, and buying carrots at the farmer’s market. I saw her everywhere and everywhen in most meaningful instances of my time on Earth. Her face started blending with other people’s faces, and it wasn’t long until I lost the image of her original, physical form. She became concept, the idea of beauty and independence, and beauty in independence. Like a giantess, like a huntress, an amazon, a goddess. She was everyone and every thing that reminded me of her. She was both Artemis and Minerva, both Kim Gordon and Sua Yoo, both Lauren Gerig and Mme. du Beauvoir. She was every person I looked up to, and the only valuable gem inside the treasure of my person. She was all. Not a star, but the infinite sky. Not creator, but reality — and everything else I made her up to be.
   But then something else came up, woke me out of the stupor, and when I tried to come back she simply wasn’t there anymore; god went back to his hole, and became nothing but a faceless stranger I bumped into.