Girl on a Stone

It was one of those days
Bright sunshine illuminating
Misty, banana-yellow, dandelion-hued, sunflower-rayed beams
That danced
A delicate, floating dance
To a fragile, fluttering rhythm
On this towering patch of crag, this scalloped stone
Hollowed gray

With battered hands and feet
I reached and tweaked my
Way up the slightly slanted statue of sturdy stone
I strained
Extending every flimsy string of each muscle in my short limbs

A cluttered cluster from some
Climbing camp clambered in
Evenly coursing their way up
And down this scalloped stone

Nevertheless I reached for this stubby knob
A rippling wave in the rock
Sprouting from one greater layer
I strained for the elephant’s trunk
Meandered all the way up and
Bounced down
Blissfully oblivious to the
Elephant in the room that
Took no form of a curving bulge of stone

Instead was this
Girl who sat poised on a small stone nearby
Ponderously
Watching, not climbing
Her soft smile steadied
Like she’d been recalling one truly happy memory that no one else knew
Like she’d woven some sort of miraculous positive outlook and spotted
One beautiful fleck in this
Tarnished handful of time called the present
That none other could see

And as this pinch of time barreled on
Our eyes met
Just like they did a few seconds ago
And a few seconds before that

Her shirt was orange
Neon orange, flashy and strange in its own charming way
Uncool and second-glance worthy in the best kind of way
She had one dark freckle beside her nose, and she was short
Like me
She smiled at me, and I smiled back

Distracted, I slithered my way up one more rough, rocky route
And we left

Of course I looked back
I strained over my shoulder
Until the dwindling trees cruelly condensed just enough to
Mask this projectile to her
I watched the world go by
Perhaps I could have said “bonjour”
And then what?
From the not-at-all generous teaspoon of the language I’d picked up
Of course I was far too sheepish to taste my clumsily bitter accent on even the
Simplest of phrases

So I let the opportunity slip by
The opportunity for who-knows-what
Perhaps one of those storybook true friends
In these turmoiling times of 2021's scorching summer
Someone who could spot a flickering light in the dark and smile
Someone who could bear a bright neon t-shirt and smile
Although I carried a twinge of envy for this
I only vowed to learn, as if perhaps
Befriending someone of the sort would make me
Unafraid to do the same

But I let the opportunity slip by
Like a ribbon falling through my fingertips
Like a tender twig drifting down the stream
Like an eagle soaring overhead before vanishing beyond the crinkled horizon
Like a young girl with one freckle and dark eyes and dark hair and a shocking, double-take worthy orange t-shirt
Who sat ponderously on this one little rock deep in the stony hills somewhere over yonder in the sun-blanketed hills of southern France
And smiled at me