Having Not Met You

Having Not Met You

This time is the last time to be here
Be here now


This is a long walk.

The dune is close now, so close, a cliff of sand topped with swaying grasses and jutting out onto the beach in a point, a hook, a lighthouse home.

There you are. A small figure atop the dune, alone, gazing out at sea.

I mean, it could be you. You know who you are—the one I'm looking for, the one I want to meet. Poised against a blue sky atop a mountain of sand, waiting.

Looking?

I stare up at you and you continue to stare eastward. Right now we're strangers. I don't know you and you don't know me, not a thing, not a whisper, not a word. But what if you're the one? What if by walking by or turning around, I'm missing something fantastic?

If only, as I stare up at you, you'd turn and stare back. I can't see your eyes from here and mine are hidden behind darkened glass windows, but I'll take them off and you'll come down. Slowly, not rushing, you'll walk up to me, and you'll say,


"Hi."


No.

You keep staring at the sea; I'll walk slowly to the dune, check to make sure there are no park rangers watching, pretend to ignore the sign that says "Keep off the dunes," and slowly make my way up the steep slope. I'll sit beside you in the scratchy green grasses and watch the Atlantic undulate. Sometime I'll chance a glance at you and by happenstance, you'll be looking at me. I'll smile and maybe give a little wave, and say,


"Hi."


We'll talk. First about the usual: where are you from? what's your name? how old are you? what's brought you out here this fine day?

You'll admit that the surf-fishers down below, with the big black pickup truck, are your buddies, but that you're not so much into fishing. Admittedly, they aren't either. Fishing = drinking, really, and you've already had one cheap beer. You don't really want another. The ocean's buzz is better.

I'll admit that I'm here with family, because even though I'm eighteen I don't even have a learner's permit, how lame is that? You'll say it's okay and say that if I live in the city, I don't need to drive. I tell you I do, most of the year, and we'll find out that we go to the same school—


No.

We don't go to the same school. You go to Johns Hopkins or MICA or something of the sort, something I can take the Collegetown Shuttle to for free to visit you during the school year.


(concerts at the Recher where youI can slip yourmy hand into mineyours and we'll look at each other singing all the words to our favorite band and know)


You'll say you have a friend at Towson U and I'll tell you


"Well, now you've got two."


and you'll smile—I like your smile, and I like your windswept hair. I'll try to smooth mine down but it probably won't do any good. College kids like to talk about college, so we'll do some of that and discover that I want to teach elementary school and you want to be a pediatric doctor, different passions but with a common interest.

From that point on we'll be children ourselves


although really we ARE children, trapped on the cusp of adulthood and tipsy with the effort needed to make the transition, the way I struggled to get into the water earlier and was cured only by a headfirst dive into an oncoming wave—hopefully we don't wipe out, right?


, particularly when the park police show up and tell us to get off the dunes. We'll slide down sheepishly and hang our heads while they lecture us about erosion


No.

I'll spot them before they spot us and blurt out a few choice and colorful words before grabbing your hand and pulling you down the back side of the dune, where they can't see us. We'll lie quiet for a few minutes before the laughter bursts through our lips and into the scrub brush of the park. The best part is you won't be weirded out that I'm treating you like an old friend


(rather like one of those friends you used to make at the park, at the beach, at friends-of-the-family get-togethers when you were a kid, the ones you were immediately intimate with despite knowing one another for only a moment, and whom you would never see again, five years crammed into five hours)


, because you feel like an old friend, and that's how I know. That and the butterflies that take flight in my stomach when your eyes linger on me for just a second too long. We've stumbled upon something here and we know what it is—don't want to admit what it is—but don't want to say.

We'll decide on a walk through the scrub and pine, cursing when we get burrs stuck to our feet but laughing at the mad hop this causes the afflicted to do. We'll talk some more. I'll find a reed an old glass bottle with a faded blue label and blow haunting wind notes from it while you tell me I'll get diseases that way, but how do I do that so well? I make a two-note orchestra with the bottle and a reed and explain that I sortofkindofhorribly play the flute. You'll say you play the violin and I'll say


"I thought so."


You want me to show you how to make haunting wind music so I do, attempting to show you how flutist

"I am a flutist, not a flautist; I play the flute, not the flaut."

mouth posture is kind of like kissing the mouthpiece and rolling up away. All this kissy stuff makes me think of kissing you


(again)


but we've only just met, after all, and I am still unicorn-pure


haven't met a unicorn yet and so all I get out of that is an awful awkwardness when it comes to these sorts of things with which I have absolutely no experience


so I don't do it.


The summer solstice was just last Sunday and so even though it's after five o'clock (the lifeguards having left, whistles blowing), the sun is nowhere close to setting. It'd be romantic maybe to say that we chatted for the next four hours and then sat on top the dune to watch the sun set


not over the ocean, stupid, this is the east coast so if you want red on the water, kill someone at sea or wake up for a sunrise.


, but we don't need sunsets. I've seen a million, but I've only seen one you, and you look good in the golden light of evening. We'll trade numbers and full names and promises to "Facebook each other" when we get home, each worrying that the other will forget.

I'll hug you and you'll smell like salt and seaweed and sweat; sun-tired, we'll slip off our separate ways and


No.

I'll run off with you. I'll forsake my family and you'll abandon your buddies with the booze or your girlfriends with the tanning oil, and we'll get a campsite here in the park. Maybe not even that; we'll run ragged and wild like a couple of Lost Boys, with no Wendy to straighten us up but no Peter to lead us about, either.

We'll eat the eggs of ground-nesting birds and steal snacks from the beachgoers' unsupervised coolers, dodging park police and washing in the salt-spray at night when the dolphins come to play


(Yes, there are dolphins off the coast of Delaware. They come rather close and more than once I've ducked my head underwater to hear them singing to one another.)


We'll live in one of the old watch-towers, pillars of concrete with thin slitty eyes that look out over the land. The ghosts there will be glad to have our company, though the ones who died waiting for the ships of their beloveds might be jealous of our


(what we do on stormy nights, more than one type of thunder echoing through the dark)


But I walked away.
You never looked at me.
I didn't climb the dune.


(c o w a r d)


I walked away across the limpets


teeny-tiny, four could fit on my pinky nail, and in so many colors, washed over by waves and waves and waves and waves—


and back to our blue umbrella, back to the car, where I am now, listening to Nickel Creek


Reminding me of what has been
And what will never be


and to my mother's disappointment that all the little and large produce stands are gone, that we can't stop for cantaloupe and jam and honey


(you'll taste like honey, honey)
"honeyed" is one of my favorite words, you know


anymore and have something sweet for the two-hour drive


to a place I can't stand anymore, too many memories. This morning I spent $45 on ibuprofen for my aching jawfaceheadears and a mouthguard for the grinding and clenching I do at night. Anxiety and the occasional nightmare and sometimes wanting


to just walk into the waves as I'm walking away from possible-you, let them embrace me, envelop me, take me fully into the deeping dark


but that's what mom almost did, and I found her, and I can't do that to them or to myself—if her attempted suicide fucked me up this badly then what would my actual do to our


home.


Sometimes I want to (yell I ' M H E R E, L O O K A T M E!) anyway.


But I won't, having not met you.


(yet)