The National - England
Cari used to get kicked out of restaurants for laughing too hard. She had asthma so when she really got laughing she would run out of breath, it would come out like a quack. And loud. There was a pressure built up in her body. Her tiny frame came from a birth four months premature, she was not expected to live. She'd been handed a death sentence on her first breath where the rest of us feign forms of immortality. So she lived.
I first met her through a friend. She stood alone doing the dishes of idiot men as they sat in the living room talking about football, pussy. Then she came into the room and told them how dumb they were while they wanted for her words against and laughed. We didn't know each other for months but to stop and say hello. And when she told me of England, her coming solo trip and her want for companionship I said yes. She was going to see some mutual friends, I had never been outside Canada and I wanted for her words.
London came and we slept on the floor of our friends flat, made cereal in the kitchen. We bought some beer and went out dancing, met drunk old racist men and attractive women who loved our voices. We celebrated in the streets with a 3 story high bonfire, fireworks, young men from Brighton who saw us as shining alien. We sang on the subway and spit beer.
Edinburgh was the place, though. We wandered, climbed a volcano. We got a bottle of whiskey and shared it in the basement of the hostel. We sat at a table and shared stories, she stroked her long black hair with her hand as she talked and I was sure I fell in love with her that night only. Next day was friend. We laughed how the couple who shared our room thought us a couple too as I made a pack of cards from found pen and paper.
Halifax came again. We slowly lost contact. I would see Cari in the street, would visit now and again. The last time I saw Cari I lamented, she'll one day be a great mother and I'll have to see her only in passing.
So much beauty passing by unrecognized.
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