Sophia

I sit idly in the coffee shop, my head down in contemplative thought. The music has at this point become nothing more than the dull drone of a poor, trapped housefly, living out the last of its days caught on the wrong side of a dirty window pane. A slight fancy dances into my head giving me the inclination to look up. Walking past the large windows of the shop, caught in the arcing eclipse of fog and glass, I take in movement. The people of the day struggle to align mind and foot as the thought of work causes their feet to hesitate in every step. I see this and know that but a momentary lapse in their concentration would cause their feet to immediately change their course, directed at once towards home. Their body following, giving no fight continue on its current forced, and laborious journey. Ah! But there comes a soul lightly stepping down the sidewalk. So light and free I know at once it is her. The way each foot, so small and delicate, steps one in front of the other, with no sign of struggle, alignment, perfectly in sync. The way she floats atop each yellow and red stained fallen leaf of October, leaving a floating fiery wake behind her. Light stepping, leaf to leaf, she slowly raises her hand towards her cheek to address the stray wisps of hair that tumble off her brow, so slightly out of place. This is the only way I know she is not some ethereal being, those stubborn bangs. Lost. My mind swerves down roads long forgotten. I'm chasing her down country lanes, dusty, dirty, lonely. I spent one thousand years chasing that wisp of stray hair in the deepest corners of my mind. I climbed trees, surveying the land below, I jumped streams, and leapt down mountains. A sound sparked in my ears, unearthly in my dream land, and I crashed backwards through the dark moss covered limbs, I came screaming back over country lanes, and reeling back to the coffee shop. I moved my feet, the sound of hard soled boots scuffing along the polished cement floor, that was my undoing. She was gone, I never did catch her. I huddle inward, respite. Everything pauses, and I see her again, alignment, perfectly in sync. I tried every day to walk like her. I tried everyday to be one. I am still with three, and I, the fourth, struggling behind and always shouting at the top of my lungs "me, me, me".