Bruno's Leaves

Isabel Krome
Bruno's Leaves

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. She sat on her kitchen counter with the hand grinder from the market in Oaxaca between her knees and ground the beans, gentle circles with the warm wooden handle. The redbud tree across the street caught her eyes and she stared with some longing, like she wanted to curl up in the flowers called the harbingers of spring, the dear redbud of whom she was so jealous because it and spring were lovers.

Years ago, when she was eighteen and taking some time 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 had immediately perceived that he was lost to her, and as an inexcapable penance doomed herself to the constant company of her own shyness.

She couldn't undo that glance, the connection, the inconceivable joy like a crystalline wave and then the deep loss, a yawning chasm in her side, an unidentifiable ache. His memory has been reduced in the convening decade to a knot under her left shoulderblade which made the act of grinding her coffee by hand a daily sacrifice, a daily reminder. It twinged now as she smelled the bitter damp coffee. But she knew it would be massaged away eventually by the constant gentle action, and then she would have fresh dark coffee to drink, staining her teeth to match her sad yellowish skin. Blending in with the offwhite walls of the lawfirm where she worked as a secretary was the final goal. Miela liked the thought of making manifest her feelings of somehow being indistinguishable from her surroundings.

Miela had been a good student, a list of honors, awards, and accomplishments which ended up looking more tedious than impressive on an application. She had been 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 slept fitfully 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. But shot glasses seemed to contain as much reticence as anything else did in those days, and worse yet were the parties, which were not inclined to silence but instead seemed to make the world louder and in the chaos, she felt each time more and more wispy, small, cold. Lost in the shuffle, she wandered down her path, shyness and doubt wearing deeper into her psyche.

But her market-man's face stuck with her, intense chin and thin nose, jaw-length hair, a neutral dark blonde and gray eyes like angry clouds waiting for the cool relief of rain. Those eyes floated in front of her, and life had made hers so similar that all she had to do was look in a mirror to be struck down again by the memory.

Her 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. He seemed to have forgotten how to smile, a trait he probably thought they shared. 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, with her coffee and her knot and the rancor towards springtime's caresses, she thought she had an idea.

There had been rain, she remembered, torrential downpours and a steaming ground, her feet squelched in mud with each step. She herself wasn't wet, but she was aware that she should be. There was a garden, a dingy one like you find in places with too small a space, every inch crammed with life. The borders were railroad ties, and plants with tiny white flowers grew and were being drenched. Tall plants with leaves like green foam leaned against the wall of a house, the house with peeling paint and sagging railings. Everything looked brand new, though, like it was designed and constructed to sag and peel and groan.

Miela remembered in flashes, trying to construct a timeline of her dream, failing. A man had been there, the face which haunted her, and in her dream if not ever in reality they had greeted each other and embraced with the familiarity of long companionship. He named himself Bruno, a name which made her blush unexplainably bright red. You always blush, he said, sweet like honey.  He smiled at her under the dripping leaves of the redbud. She couldn't remember any more.

The rest of that year, from the new spring to the dust of summer to leaves' death cries in fall and winter's drowsy frost, Miela dreamed and dreamed, while awake just as much as while asleep. Waking was simply a transition between true lucidity and a slight fog. Her dream market man grew closer, a part of herself now.

Because we can only forgive others for leaving us when we have come to terms with being leaveable, Miela's dreams faded slowly. But she grew happier, sleep circles disappearing. Her boss with the clear braces and the stiff suits and the green eyes learned to smile back at her, and soon enough she had changed careers and married her former boss. She moved into his house one morning in May, and decided that next year she would plant a redbud, the harbinger of the spring with which she had made peace. Her dream-Bruno, whom she no longer referred to as market man in her mind, could then have a place to rest. Tender green leaves on the sapling next spring brought tears to her eyes standing on the blue peeling-paint porch, and she didn't know why. She felt new life kick inside of her belly, exuberant as the sunlight, and she went inside to rest.