la foule

You'd look into her eyes,and note-the death of hope?No,nothing near that tragic.The trouble was explaining what you saw,the discovery itself was no big conundrum.It wasn't full of hopelessness-these sometimes gleaming,often blank and everstill gaze-perhaps more so a lack of hope,as if you were looking into a strangers' pair of eyes,expecting to see some trace of what you saw in everyone else's eyes: a mechanism and human predictability,they say the eyes speak most of a person's current emotion.And if this were the case,her eyes were muted from speech or expression,told nothing but concealed nothing.

It wasn't that she was different,she'd talk and say things,respond to your queries,play her part politely in a conversation-play by the rules,but still you'd find yourself alone-in her company,you felt something taken from you,some part personal: dark,quiet and painful manifest in her long silences,still hands-you'd try to catch her thoughts,read her face but found her impenetrable.And you'd speculate,leading to all kinds of possibilities-try to utter a question,highlight her plight,find its source-and you'd find yourself disappointed,this girl was genuinely fine,if not happy at least contented in some poor and battered way.

And then one evening,just you and her,you'd spot a light in her eyes-something comes alive,a smile comes to surface-and she'd start to sing,at first a melody without verse DA DA DA DA DA DA that ran and jumped all across the room,knocking over your sense of who and here,and present in her voice the sound of trumpets and violins and a whole circus of emotion,an orchestra of sounds that moved you from inside:here you are shoulders jerking forward,hips grinding to a tune,legs already upbeat,now she is perched on a stage-the voice a master,creating illusions and sensations unfelt before,there is only her voice-et la foule vient de me jeter entre ses bras!-a higher reality,amidst all this you peer into her eyes: this secret uncovered,a bottomless well of joy,and you had a feeling it wasn't hers or yours to feed on-but here it was,and the moment as you knew: was yours to claim.

...