I

She said it again, “I looked at him with the eyes I had then.”
Arlu sat a moment, staring at the cup before her, looked up at Arlene and said,
“Yeah, I’ve done that too. I know what you mean. There is this odd moment
when love settles into something else, when you see you’d never been in love all along.”
She paused, glanced out over the coffeehouse scene, turned again to Arlene,
“Weird, huh? That we’d feel so strongly that this was it. This is the one.
Then one day, some odd comment or a whisper of an expression seen sideways
and it’s all dust.”
 
“Yeah,” Alrene said. “Yeah, and, still, in that moment, to see him again
for the first time, to feel that same surge.”
 
“And know you will not feel it again. Ever,
for this man.” Arlene stared off, almost in tears, the mourning only beginning.
She asks herself what is this about. And Arlu, watching, guesses the question,
“This is what it’s about: love; it is finding who we are
in the question
we call love.”
 
“We will ask again, each of us, we will ask
until there is an answer.”