that place

Everyone has a place, a point in time that they wish they could return to. Some for experience, some to change things, say something different, do something different, and some just wish to exist in it for the peace it brings.

I was so close to that place last night that the anxiety and longing for it has been squeezing my heart all day. I sat face to face with the person who exists in that place with me. We said nothing. Just sat. And as I was leaving they told me to wait for them. “Wait for me” they whispered as I walked out. Not to take them with me there and then for that was all but impossible. But to wait. Outside. Elsewhere. Perhaps forever. To wait for them.
It was a meeting filled with unanswered questions. Questions that I will probably never find answers to. Of course I could do my best to hunt them down. But life has changed now and that place only exists in a memory of so many years ago.

The exhilaration of wearing my hijab properly for the first time. My first ever Eid prayer. The rush back to college. Getting to class late and shocking the pants of almost everyone in the room. Including my companion. They cried. May Allah swt bless them. Rejected from class by a less than impressed lecturer, we wandered over to the park. They, carrying my Eid present – a rather large box of Lebanese pastries. Me sitting in the grass, eating them. Being watched. Free conversation. Useless conversation. Words forgotten as quickly as they were pronounced. Office workers rushing by, late to start the day. Birds chirping in the trees above, all but drowned out by the incessant roar of peak hour traffic. And us. It was a bubble. Just us. I can feel the damp of the grass soaking through my jeans and laughing when I rise finding my backside is a nice wet splodge. Forgetting the damp and lying down together and watching the sky. Commenting on the clouds. Laughing at our lecturer. Silence on my transformation.

I wonder if they remember it as I do. How I wish to know how they are. What they are doing. How life has changed. Share the years that we’ve missed. Be. It was all so easy.

But all this is just a far off dream. If it weren’t for last night, maybe I could sleep. Dreams are indeed a powerful thing.