The Red Lace
By Denver E. Torres
Another afternoon this is of wishing, wanting desperately your physical presence, not so much because I need to touch you nor I need that touch. But simply I want something corporeal to manifest my belief, to confirm what I see, have been seeing, the promise of this red silky lace wrapped around my right wrist. This I started seeing at Grade Four when I met Alfred, the nice, Chinese kid offering help, suggesting love through his ballpens. I wonder how many ballpens his mom bought him then. The red lace never really went away. At first, I cannot live with its presence, the awkwardness of being tied to something, generating a feeling of lost liberty. I tried. I tried so much to take it off my wrist but it does not have the tangible property like the lace in my mom’s dress. Unlike that lace, this lace in my wrist does not fade over the years as if no dye is in it. I wonder what gives its tint.
I started to inspect the wrists of other people and I never saw any red lace tied in them at first. Though one morning it was all different. Laces exactly like mine they also had. One time I saw a couple sweetly walking together with hands not holding each other but the lace, one single lace held their hands together. It has an end, as first I believe that it does not have an end. That the lace extends far into the infinite distance and has no end. But that single instance altered my old view, same way how Columbus changed Copernicus’ view that the earth is flat and not round. Excited, everyday eyeing on people, asking to myself to who could the other end of this lace in my wrist is connected to. I have looked and looked and climbed a mountain to see clearly if there was really someone in the horizon. I see the lace travel far and the limits of my vision assured me nothing. With desperation I tried to pull it towards me, to feel even at least his weight, but the lace does not allow, refusing my desire.
Just there like a ballerina suspended gracefully in the air, dancing as if teasing my impatient heart.
