(After Richard Brautigan)
I was trying to describe you to someone not long ago, but you don’t look like any other woman I’ve ever seen before.
I couldn’t say “You know, she looks like that one actress from that movie, except she’s got more freckles, and her hair is this cute kind of bob. Actually, she looks like the singer from that band, but of course her lips are a different shape and her eyes are prettier, but hard to read behind her glasses.”
I couldn’t say any of those things because you don’t look like anyone else at all.
I finally ended up describing you as a memory I had from the summertime, a year ago. My brother and sister-in-law brought my niece to see fireworks for the first time and I went along with them. It was May or June or maybe even July and a very humid night, but not unpleasantly so. The fireworks weren’t for any particular celebration or anything, but it was still beautiful to watch.
As I stood there, next to people I love, I took extra care to watch my niece who had never seen this type of magic before that point. I thought about how I would explain fireworks to her when she is older. I thought about how I would tell her that the Tang Dynasty in 9th-century China were among the first people to use them for celebrations. I thought about how that explanation might be a little too technical, might remove some of the mystery.
Instead, I made sure I was looking at my niece’s face as the first blasts were shot off. I looked into her big, beautiful, blue eyes and saw the wonder of her experiencing something so incandescent and seemingly ethereal for the first time. Her beatific expression made me think of how I will never again experience anything like that, but that I’d always follow that feeling. Much of my life has been spent diving in headfirst, ignoring the potential for pain.
Listening to the oohs and ahhs of my niece though, I became acutely aware of the fact that sometimes this world holds moments so beautiful that they can break a person apart. Standing there that humid night, I was glad not to be a cautious man. That breaking into millions of pieces when faced with beautiful things wasn’t something I’d ever want to give up.
And as each firework shot off, my niece was completely engrossed in the sublime ineffability of it, oblivious to everything else, save for the dazzling beauty of that which she had never seen before.
I watched the pop and fizzle of the reds and blues and yellows and greens reflected in the dark pools of her eyes, and there was a familiar swelling in my heart that seems to resurface every time I experience something like this. And that was my focus, simultaneously the spectacle, but also the quiet tenderness I was feeling. That luminous space I get lost in again and again.
It felt beautiful to be a part of that; seeing this new person who was incredibly and unabashedly amazed by something that I’d taken for granted for most of my life. That wonder and excitement and notion of so much more to see.
And that’s how you look to me.
AJ Buckle is a poet and teacher living in and writing from his apartment in Ottawa, Canada. He holds an Honours BA in Literature and enjoys listening to records and tending to his houseplants when not having an existential crisis. You can read his shitty tweets at @buckle_aj