Love in the Time of Bedlam

I fell in love at the Advice Tent on Sunday. I careened, limbs flailing, over the side of it, head first, wrists up. I will never see him again. I do not know his name. This is how it happened:

My category of advice was Radical Vulnerability. Arranged by Anja Notànjà Sieger & La Prosette, poets who were not to speak sat at typewriter stations in a room, each offering advice according to their chosen category. People came to hand us written questions. We typed poems for them.

I wept. Through most of it, I wept. A silent crying. I looked into the eyes of strangers and held their hands. They asked me about their loneliness. About the value of their lives. About how they were going to survive. About who would love them. About their bodies, and their validity. Sometimes they wept, too. We would interlock our fingers, and I would hold them steadily, their hands. We all know of the Vena Amoris, that vein that is said to run directly from the left hand to the heart. I don’t care whether this is true. It is part of our mythology. My whole body is a myth. So is yours.

A man arrived, and I felt him in the room before I ever saw him. I was busy, typing instructions for healing, instructions for destruction, lists of ways to get through the world without giving up, ideas for how to say no; I was busy. But I could feel him. I looked up between clients, and I saw him, finally, at one station, and then another. He went around the room to each poet. He saved me for last.

At one point, as I was finishing up with a person, I looked up and saw him, standing against the wall, waiting. We locked eyes. We nodded our heads. He was waiting for me. Finally, finally, there he stood in front of me.

I think he was beautiful, but I am not sure. I think he had tattoos, but I am not sure of that, either. He was taller than me, but then, everyone is, anyway, and I was seated. What I know is that he held my hands and looked into my eyes, and what I found there was a thing I can never, ever speak of. I wrote two poems for him. I plucked some dragon’s blood resin from my table and closed his fingers around it. I resisted the urge to kiss his cheek. He stood there, his hands in mine, searching me for something. I don’t know what he found. I know that he did not break eye contact. I know that if there had not been someone waiting behind him, we might have stayed like that all day.

When my shift ended, and I went into the main room, I greeted a friend and said, “I can speak out here!” Behind my friend, there was the man. He said, “It’s good to finally hear your voice!” And I was flustered. I wanted to reach for him, and grip his hand again. I wanted to ask him a thousand questions. But this is not the world we live in. We do not interlock fingers and say, “Who are you? What are you made of?”

So I did not respond, and continued greeting my friend. When I looked up again, the man was gone.

I walked out into the heat and the festival, rubbing glitter from my eyes. I removed the glass crown I was wearing. My shift as a mystic was over, and again I was just Nina. Nina the Infuriating. Nina Who Needs a Beer. I looked around, knowing that if I were to find him and introduce myself, the illusion would be broken, and I would be just a woman squinting into the sun, and I would not be special anymore. So I didn’t look for him.

How can you possibly look for a person, any kind of person, in a world like this? You can only meet them in moments, and you can spill, and then you can lose them in the crowd.

This is how you can know I love you. I will lose you in the crowd.