Short Story Continued - new piece
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A dream. It's nice to feel loved. We were in a little bar in Johannesburg, on the beach. The water was blinding. The sun shined down on it so firmly and directly that you couldn't look at it directly; only from an odd angle. You made a comment about this, the relation of the water, and how you looked at it, to the way you looked at me, and I think I laughed. I seemed happy. Your mouth moved in mine.
We turned for a little bit and spoke to some German tourists sitting next to us. They didn't know any English so we spoke German with them. They were from Hamburg. They'd never been south of the equator before, and now they were in South Africa. We told them a little bit about Brooklyn, and that they were no more out of their element than we were. But we didn't seem out of our element. You rested your head on my shoulder and seemed very comfortable.
Then the drinks came. We both had yellow root tea. You told me to slow down, that to drink it too quickly, and when it is too hot, stops its ability to work. Going through things too quickly, I responded, always does. After that we just sat there for a long time, looking at the water with a soundtrack of waves and German and the warping of the wooden ceiling fans as they circled ever so gently above us. I was the world, and the world was me.
And then I realized; that yellow root tea doesn't exist. That I don't speak German. Neither do you. And we've never been to South Africa. Not to mention - Johannesburg is inland. There are no beaches there. Maybe if there were, you would still love me. But there aren't, and you don't. It was these thoughts that greeted me as I woke up.
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A dream. It's nice to feel loved. We were in a little bar in Johannesburg, on the beach. The water was blinding. The sun shined down on it so firmly and directly that you couldn't look at it directly; only from an odd angle. You made a comment about this, the relation of the water, and how you looked at it, to the way you looked at me, and I think I laughed. I seemed happy. Your mouth moved in mine.
We turned for a little bit and spoke to some German tourists sitting next to us. They didn't know any English so we spoke German with them. They were from Hamburg. They'd never been south of the equator before, and now they were in South Africa. We told them a little bit about Brooklyn, and that they were no more out of their element than we were. But we didn't seem out of our element. You rested your head on my shoulder and seemed very comfortable.
Then the drinks came. We both had yellow root tea. You told me to slow down, that to drink it too quickly, and when it is too hot, stops its ability to work. Going through things too quickly, I responded, always does. After that we just sat there for a long time, looking at the water with a soundtrack of waves and German and the warping of the wooden ceiling fans as they circled ever so gently above us. I was the world, and the world was me.
And then I realized; that yellow root tea doesn't exist. That I don't speak German. Neither do you. And we've never been to South Africa. Not to mention - Johannesburg is inland. There are no beaches there. Maybe if there were, you would still love me. But there aren't, and you don't. It was these thoughts that greeted me as I woke up.
posted by Z. Wigon at 8:52 PM
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