The musicality of the winds played novenas through the dainty belvedere of my friend’s home. She was sitting next to me, severely admiring the beauty of an author she had been reading, and explaining in great detail how, said author’s, employment of phrasing and imagery made him, in her opinion, “Nothing short of genius”. She was so enthusiastic in fact, that the cigarette, snugly in its holder was shaking ash all over the floor of the gallery. I watched the flecks of ash fall sleepily to the terracotta tile, and paid attention only to the ticking of my watch and the summer breeze's melody.
“John,” she interjected whirring around to meet my eyes, “why do you invite yourself over if you refuse to speak?”
“I’m sorry,” I began, and met her gaze with a reproachful look, “It seems that lately I’ve been buried in the urge to run.”
Manya, my beautiful company, looked away from me and took a long and satisfactory tug on her cigarette. She let the smoke slowly make its way from her lungs to the air before us.
“Run if you must, but know I will not always call this my home, and you will not always be my object of charity.” She laughed after this, but not jokingly, she meant her laughter to be a sign of assurance, a signal proving to me the severity of her intent. Rather than indulging her in an argument and giving her the space necessary to remove me of my esteem, I allowed the sounds of August to rush around us, and reprieve me from a more violent defeat.
“Becoming who you want to be doesn’t require that you abandon those who know you as you are now.”
“If I leave here, Manya, I will not return.” I immediately realized the banality of that line, and how many people before me had said it only to resend it sorrowfully upon their return. It was only to me, that it even occurred the seriousness of my plans. “I don’t intend to give you up, friend, sometimes things just smolder to nothing on their own.”
Manya, now clearly upset with my words, turned away from me, rising from her chiffon and lace throne to face the yawning French doors. “Then take your leave.” As she whispered this across the room to me, she bowed her head in a grandiose gesture pressuring me to immediately run from the room, and out into my freedom. I ascended from my own chair, and across the floor to her.
“Manya,” I said, “What is now, will always be.” And perhaps in my biggest display of spontaneity yet, I found myself walking away from my friend, from her flaxen curls, away from her home of ceaseless abundance, and toward the future and truths I had to seek out for myself.
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