Anatidaephobia

Took pictures with my crappy camera phone in late February and posted them online only to discover years later that you too were fascinated by that particular water fowl. We discussed the unusual coincidence of our mutual attraction as we crossed the street away from the park. There we made a happy memory, framing ourselves between the bridge and the sky, backlit by a vaguely violet setting sun. Your half-shut eyes glinting a distinct reflection of some distant flame.

"They are my favorite," you said, once again bringing my mind back to the feathered boats below, and between that and the thing with the lemons, I was certain there could be none other in the whole of creation just like you.

"Really?" I asked, smiling to myself as they drifted along, cloud-like, and you floated by my side. You held my hand, then, for the hundredth or so time, but it felt like the first. Always did.

A whole year later, in a close, yet wholly different part of town, my hands stayed jammed into lonely pockets. Three marriages, in different ceremonial stages, posed themselves all across the park. Bludgeoning onto the scene here and there amidst the crowds, passersby with their own lives did something I could never quite figure. With their twisting pathways I watched as stories rewrote themselves in flirtatious conversation or silence filled itself with sunlight. In my hasty getaway, I nearly crashed into a chubby lesbian couple making out under a willow tree by the water.

Digging my steps in deeper, I shuffled along the edge of the pond. I thought of you then as little kids found the way to escape their parents' desperate clutches. One almost fell in had it not been for the sudden site of ripples across the water.

Looking out on the sun-glazed surface, I stooped, perhaps to catch a glimpse through younger eyes. As I leveled my eyes with the extending circlets, a wave of biting nostalgia nearly toppled me. I was by myself now, except for them, a small group of merry sailors in greens and reds and greys and browns. The bridge was gone and so were you, and this time I was not looking down from high above but straight into their alien eyes that belonged so much more than I. Your favorite, my favorite. I couldn't even get a good picture for my phone, not really, to post online so maybe you'd see. One emerald male got close, and I knew then. I wasn't looking at him anymore, not in the same way, but in that moment, I knew it was looking right back at me, it's wide-open eyes glinting a distinct reflection of some distant flame.