I heard the strains of the Yanadi folk song before I saw him…fringes of my eyes lifted and took in…limpid chocolate pools that…reflected the vista…picture imprisoned in thick panes of train windows…we were passing painting by the hand of …heaven’s elves…canvas that changed with each turn of the trail…with each note from his brown cherry lips…he stopped when he realized…I was staring at him …“hello miss”….pink and white fingernails were the end of white cocoa knuckled fingers… grasping headrest of his well worn leather seat…he struggled to stay upright as…the train jostled us home to… “hello…”….i didn’t say more…I wanted him to keep singing…song telling me stories of his skin burnt brown like his mothers naan oven…I wanted him to keep speaking…lilting honey laced sound selling his soul to merchant of my heart’s affections…I wanted him to keep looking at me…child eyes…demanding that I recognize the meaning of this space in our lives…when he brushed my skin with his baby breath and ….fed me sweet tea…the kind his mother poured from the leaf infused bottom of her…wedding china…humid Sunday afternoon when neighbors…sat on verandah cane chairs…gossiping and swatting at flies…the only motion amidst the sun’s stillness….for a moment I loved him like my own…until… he pursed his lips and resumed his song….breaking away from my gaze…he turned around in his…well worn leather seat…and…seeing that he was gone from me…I…went back to my book…a thousand pages unseen…I relived my life with the Yanadi child on the Amtrak train car to Buffalo…
….I still want to run my fingers through his tight brown curls….and…give him treats from the depths of my bosom…because for those moments…he was mine.
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