Four hundred years of waiting at the mailbox, and I find you at the kitchen table, snapping snap peas with mimi. No answers, no indication of your entry. You flash me a grin when she looks out the window at the feeder. You are pleased with yourself, for evading me so. I am pleased also, though I pretend not to be. I feign frustration, exasperation. You would come in the back door.
You talk with mimi for hours. I lean on the sink, tired, and I listen. I am learning nothing about where you've been, what you've done. Why you're here, now. You answer none of my questions. Mimi answers all of yours. She knows who you are, which is important. You can't appreciate how rare that is these days.
Her recognition is not wasted on you, as it would be on me. I know most of her stories by now. She cycles, repeats, reinvents. There may be more hidden deep; you are fishing as though you know the waters.
You know I rode a horse, she says. To school, every day. Until I rode through the fields and tried to jump the ditch. The horse stopped just there, and inertia carried me across like a cloud.
I know the story. She lands on her feet like a gymnast from the balance beam. I've heard this story so many times, I can almost see her standing there, marveling at the wonder of it all, like an explorer who has turned around on the horizon looking back at her wake, at the novelty of what she's known and traversed. The marvel of perspective, achieved by velocity and risk and dexterity.
I've heard her stories before, and I am ashamed to be wearied by them.
You also have heard her stories, but you ask her your questions still, and mimi laughs. You shape her stories with your questions, carve space that her sentences fill with jigsaw precision. How she delights to tell such perfect stories, as a stream delights to fill a gully shaped for it before time began. She's laughing, harder than she's laughed in months. Years. Since you left here.
What are you doing here?
I wrote some questions down, years ago. There was no prophet to answer them, no sage, no word from a far kingdom. I hid them on page fifty-seven of my journal. That's what page I was on, no significance. I add questions to it, every once in a while. Sometimes I wake up with an answer, and go back to sleep with a smile creeping over me. I have lost every trace of the answer come morning, except for that smile. It lingers all day, a smile as small as it is persistent, as though waiting to stumble across good news forgotten, as though searching for a gift hidden by a friend early in the day.
Sometimes I wake up with a question, alarmingly brilliant. It is bright in my mind, searingly white-hot as the sun and piercing with clarity. I never forget these questions, even if I forget to write them down. I cannot go back to sleep. I cannot smile, think. I am paralyzed internally until nightfall. Sometimes until several nights fall. I am very tired these days.
Mimi sends us to the rockers on the porch with a cup of ice cream apiece. It is good to sit with you, though I cannot taste the ice cream. You savor every spoonful. I sit on the edge of my chair without moving, eager to speak and afraid to begin speaking. You smile, as though everything is right in the world, and it is, and the moon is rising behind the magnolia so that its shadow withdraws from over us until the light sneaks over the uppermost limbs to find you. I am watching your smile.
You begin to speak, and it is as though a million diamonds are scattered by your voice. It is shockingly extravagant, frivolous. I want to catch each word in a setting of gold, and also to watch them roll off of the grass at the same moment like ancient dew drops, and I start because I may have missed your words for their charm, but you are smiling again, waiting for me to return to you.
You begin again, and I strain to hear each word. You tell me of wonders no man can have seen, and of kingdoms heretofore thought indescribable. Your words are normal words, but are made of light, and I see the things you tell me. And you tell me of men, and women, and of the thoughts of their hearts, and when you look at me I believe you see me clear as day, and see the world through me as though I am a window, or a mist. You only look at me once, and I look down at my hands quickly to make sure that I am still sitting there beside you.
You ask me questions, and you wait for me to find answers, but never long enough for me to speak them out loud. I wouldn't dare anyway. I believe your silence is as precious as your words. I may understand it better than your words.
I fight sleep as long as I can, cling to focus even as it dances from my eyes. This happens every time. I am falling asleep in my chair, and you are smiling, and talking still. Your voice is getting softer. I cannot tell if the approach of sleep is blanketing your words, or if you are coating your words with sleep to carry me away.
And you will be gone in the morning. You are always gone in the morning, and you always leave me without answers. Memories will speak for you, yes, though never in words that match my questions. I will dream of kingdoms and horses tonight, and awake with a soft smile. You will be gone in the morning, and you will be pleased with yourself, and this pleasure will force its way though my sadness like a tree root through the sidewalk until I crack into a small smile beneath my tears. I will smile because you were here, and cry because you are gone, and both smile and cry because you have left so few answers, just as you intended. And I will smile because you will come back someday, when I least expect it.
I will be waiting at the mailbox when you come, as you know. And I will be watching for you, though that never guarantees that I'll see you coming. I will watch more closely now lest you sneak past me again; though I doubt you will. I sense you subtlety wears thin. Nevertheless, you will come, with smile and questions and stories to tell. And when you do, I will be waiting for you. I will be waiting at the mailbox for you to come. And you will, one day, you will come again. With or without answers.
