iLiza's eyes

I found a phone number in my back pack today. It's from Israel. It's on a small piece of lined paper, written in awkward blue pen on a line near the top. It's the type of paper a waiter might use to scribble orders on. It doesn't have his name on it, but I know it's his.

I was shocked when I found it crumpled up next to my chapstick and in a pocket towards the front. I just stared at it, as people filed out of the class that just ended, and felt thrown back to another world. It's a bit of him: something he held and wrote on and passed along to me. Everything about it screams his name.

It's 1AM in Israel when I find the number. I know exactly where he is. Him and his bar and his restaurant and his belgium waffles and his cigarettes and the best sorbet in the world. I feel like he's so much closer. Like, he's up town by Columbia, close and reachable. I close my eyes and picture it. The bar, the bike, the secret moments in public.

The size of this planet is screwing with my head. I feel that I miss him, or there, or the moment, or the cigarettes. I cannot fathom that he is so far away-- so far from me, so far from the bit of him I'm holding between my fingers. But here he is, and I think "So, I've been carrying you along with me this whole time."

posted by iliza @ 6:22 PM