Leaves in Mexico

The tender green leaves, the first ones of spring, curled in much the same way as a two sleeping lovers in the first rays of morning. Miela woke up to her loneliness on the pillow next to her and saw spring unfurling suddenly outside her window, as though the world had sped up in the night. Dewy with enough sleep and hungry for routine and bitter warmth, she padded in her socks to the coffee maker.

When she was eighteen and taking a year off before college, she found herself in a crowded indoor market in Mexico, looking into the eyes of the love of her life, anonymous and fleeting. He had a knapsack slung over his shoulder, and his dirty blond stare caught her eyes from a few stalls down the pungent narrow aisle. His eyes drilled into her and she felt known, she felt a whiff of familiarity, and he knew her, he KNEW her, with a look she'd never seen before and hasn't since. Her certainty resounded inside of herself, him, him, it said, it bumped against her lungs. He stole the truest love she had without sharing it with her first, and she longed to share it like the cheap wine bought in the streets in a paper cup, which burned her young throat all the way down of rotten grapes. She looked at her feet, wriggling toes, dirty sandals, and when she looked up he was turning a corner. She knew she had lost him, and doomed herself in punishment to the constant company of her own shyness.

His face sticks with her, intense chin and thin nose, jaw-length hair, the neutral color hair, dark blonde, hair colored hair and gray eyes like angry clouds waiting for the cool relief of rain.

Miela was a good student, a list of honors, awards, and accomplishments fatiguing to write. Accepted to a good school, but she wandered through university in a daze, deep circles under her eyes, never able to remember her dreams the next morning. She wandered through semester after semester, turning her papers in on time but in class her eyes took on the angry cloud intensity of her gray eyed market-man. At night, empty drinking, debauchery so fun it seemed purposeful at times. Lost in the shuffle, she wandered down her path, shyness and doubt wearing deeper into her psyche.

An office job didn't help her, a glasses-clad boss who called her a typist and dictated letters in monotone and wore bright ties to distract from his clear braces. At work each day she hid in the echoing fake marble of the bathroom to calm her nerves. She still never remembered her dreams.

This morning, though, she thought she had an idea.