“Do you believe in soulmates?” 

It’s Friday, we are eating phở and talking of boys.

“No, not for everyone.” 

“For yourself?” 

I pause. My mouth is filled with the scallion pancake and green curry appetizer. I couldn’t afford the main red curry entree I normally would have ordered during our early night dinner.

“Yeah, yeah I do.” 

I think back on all the people I felt have captured my eye, and have almost forcibly poured myself into. 

“I think my soul is searching for someone. All the people that have hurt me, all the people are all the same. I think my soul is looking for someone, and within every person I’m getting closer. I think I knew them before all of this (gesturing to the other people at the other tables). I don’t really see myself dating around. I think one day I will just meet them and know.”

“Do you believe in multiple lives?” 

“I think so,” 

I pause. 

“I think that if there are. This isn’t my last and isn’t my first…”

A Mexican psychic once told my roommate she was on her last.

“… I’m somewhere in the middle right now. The patterns, the cycles, are all too prevalent. Too noticeable, you know?” 

They nod. 

They have witnessed the patterns of my life. They know.

____________________________________________________________

I have this habit. 

On Thursdays, once classes are dismissed, I walk over to the symphony. It is a short, brisk walk. The weekly tickets are free for the local students and with the walk I always make it there right on time. As if I was meant to spend my Thursdays that way. I use the bathroom on the first floor before waking to the third. The first floor bathroom has bigger mirrors and less of a line (I almost always have to go after holding it through my afternoons) I do this so I can spend intermission reading the program history, and gabbing with my other college friends that have sat in the different sectors. It’s fun to spot them.

People watching is an art form. I tend to focus on the old couples who go every week. Peering down at one of them from the second to first balcony. The old boy holds the program open and reads to his wife. She stays leaning on his ailing shoulder. ‘Are they always here?’  I tend to focus on the young ones yawning. How they rest their heads on the railings. How their arms are working as the in-between, as if one was asleep in their own bed laying on their side. Sometimes, on accident, they even dangle overboard. I like to sit at the back of the second balcony, in row G seat 7, because I am the last one to absorb it all. All of the noise, all of them, all of everything.

Besides me tonight sits a boy, who has chosen row G seat 8. 

During the first half, I don’t look at him. I am actually annoyed because I am now forced to share that armrest. There are plenty of open seats. He could move over one to the left with no consequence. I leave for intermission, and come back on time. The door is open but the is no rushing out. 

“Where is she?” I murmur.

“I like to think she’s back there taking one last drag from her cigarette.” He responds still forward looking. 

He tells me his name and we talk through the ending movements. 

___________________________

We will go for coffee the following Tuesday. He will see me across the street and wait, leaning against his umbrella patiently to walk together. He will order black coffee because I ordered black coffee and then ask for creamer. 

I remember- I was so caught up, I had forgotten the name of the opera from the spring. I stared out at the street and laughed, shaking my head at the idea of myself forgetting.. 

“It’s okay, just tell me the plot.” 

And I began to tell him of the English Comedy. “So there’s this boy who’s a known virgin, who disappears for a while and when he returns the town’s people assume he is no longer… though at the end it’s revealed to all be a lie. He’s just the same. The opera’s described to deal with themes of loss of innocence and social sacrifice.”

We were laughing now at the description. Him at the comedy of it all, and myself at the idea that “Life imitates Art”. 

He had this way of staring at me in that instance. It was with matter. It was as if what I was to say next mattered. It’s calming to not feel like you have to be speechless. To say what you want to say and have the other understand the shitty bus routes of Seattle, why Midwest summers are better, and that coastal cities are where the work is. 

A light rain begins to form, and we move inside to take seating. No chairs are empty.

“Would you like to do this again, same time next week?” he asks. 

I would never see him again. 

______________________________

I had found him intriguing. I wasn’t in love with him but I had found him intriguing. Though, you can’t continue a conversation someone else doesn’t want to have. Then that’s just talking to yourself, then that’s just thinking. We all think enough in our downtime already.

I like that he is no one else’s, that he is not even himself. There’s a peace that comes with that. ‘I will never see him again. No one that knows me has ever known him.’ He will never be tarnished.

But at the same time, I want the tarnishing of it all. To be worn down and found. The lucky penny you choose to pick up off the street. I want someone to say I’m lucky not because I inherently am so, but because they view me to be. I know twenty-two is not that old. Some don’t meet their person till they have become a prune themselves, but I can’t help wanting to be one of those who find it young. One of those who get to have the extra years. I am jealous of those who get to have the extra time. 

I get out of the bathtub and wipe the steam off to stare at the wet dog facing me down. 

‘I am tired’ 

I have a horrible habit of liking boys.