<march>
You can tell when someone recently cried, all you have to do is look at their eyes. When I saw her under her brightly colored umbrella in the gray intersection, I knew someone or something broke her heart. She fought against the downpour coming down her eyes, whilst the umbrella did the same from above.
The concierge told me to come back after a while, a while that he did not define. Without any choice, I left through the wooden front door, the bells chiming as I departed. When I left the hotel, the rain clouds came and dominated the once blue skies. Some motel guests rushed past me to take cover in the lobby, a place I knew I was not welcomed. Without anywhere else to go, I stepped into the rain. I did not have an umbrella, so I got a well deserved shower, cleaning away God-knows-what. Without anywhere else to go, my right foot led as my left followed into an unknown. I meandered around the town square because I had nothing else to do. This town seems to have one purpose and that purpose seems to be one of a simple existence. There was nothing spectacular about the town square, besides from what have already described. About an acre or more of paved ground, with a few trees giving the concrete reassurance that it is not alone. The clock-tower of the chapel looms above, ringing by the hour. During my walk, my stomach decided a destination for me: a diner. With my left foot taking charge, I began to walk down a street, going away from the town square. In a town this size, streetlights were a rarity, and intersections were dominated by stop signs. With a town with low traffic, the road was also a domain for pedestrians. I decided to walk in the middle of the road. I did not fear being ran over, because the cars that would do such a thing were nonexistent on this street. I walked through a four way intersection without looking left or right. As I found myself in the middle of the intersection, I saw her.
I could hear an orchestra signal her entrance into an awareness. An orchestral swelling that I had heard before, but I could not put a time or place to that memory. I must have looked insane to her, through her swollen eyes: some drenched man, stood in the middle of a intersection of two streets, staring at you with such intensity. But just like the orchestral swell that introduced her, there was something about her that looked familiar. I think I have seen her in a different context, one that was not in the pouring rain, as miserable as the weather. No, I have seen her elsewhere, without a time or place to put to a memory. She was not a past lover, because in the speculative past I could have not loved her. There were boundaries between those romantic ideas and her. A foundational resistance and aversion to those ideas. Was she a family member? Or maybe a pious woman? I thought carefully as that orchestra went through its movements. I don't think she recognized me either, probably fearing my inevitable approach. But, the inevitable is given its definition for a reason. My right foot led me away from the middle of the intersection and my left foot took me closer to this crying lady.
As I marched towards her, the orchestra entered a waltz as my feet followed that specific rhythm. I could see her eyes more clearly as I got closer: she was definitely crying. Her marks of her mascara looked like an abstract painting of a raindrop: a Rorschach test of her emotions. How could I read her? Right foot, left foot. I got closer to her. She noticed my approach and primed herself for the inevitable she dreaded. I stepped over the curb and on to a sidewalk. With around ten feet between us, her face became less familiar, and I realized the reality of the situation: my mind was lying to me about this woman. She was not someone I knew. In my life, her existence served the same purpose as the town's. The orchestra ended without any resolve.
"I am sorry, I thought I recognized you." My left foot began the retreat, my right followed too. I returned to the street, continuing to walk towards to the diner.
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