Most of what is said about Central Park in the mid afternoon is true. It feels so silly to agree that what is said to be true is true—it feels much more sophisticated to say the opposite of what is said to be true, yet it’s unsophisticated to say something false.
Dragonflies unsteadily buzzed in the golden light, dodging the gaze of sparrows and skylarks, and circled above pedestrians like some prehistoric eye of God. She watched the bird watch the dragonfly go back and forth and it made her giggle. There was an uncertain private flirtation to the dance, excited and compelling in the pure danger. “They’re just like us,” she thought to herself. Immaterial birdsong, the muted snorts of adorned and adored stallions pulling lovers through the woods, a distant honk- all that seemed orchestral, until it dissipated and only her sharp breaths endured, like some hurried solo in a golden cathedral, incandescent leaves like stained glass.
It’s trite to say the midafternoon light is golden, it’s trite to say the leaves were splattered with amber, it’s trite to comment on the perfect intimacy of a lonely moment only yards away from families and joggers - but it hadn’t been true until it was. But what they had both learned, the unspoken lesson taught by the teacher that was the golden light, is that things are trite for a reason, that what is trite is trite because what is beautiful is beautiful. ‘How many couples have laid here, how many millions have worn away the rock like a river, shaping it to the arch of her perfect back, all in a shared but secret, entirely new romance? And each woman who’s back forms to that rock says to herself: no one has felt the way I am feeling right now–she feels the flutter of the dragonflies’ wings, she feels the pit in her stomach of almost falling into the water, she feels the excitement of the child that just ran past. ‘I can see myself in your eyes,’ went unspoken until it was, and in an endless moment they held each other there. Who knew gazes could hold just as concretely as arms? And in the arms of each others’ gazes first disappeared the distant honks, then the dragonflies, the golden light, and even the rock itself–it was like floating.
They read their fiction, they read poetry and wrote it against their eyelids in silence. They read Dylan Thomas and, with eyes closed, wandered the blue-black predawn streets of a Welsh village, decades ago. Exploring worlds new and creating worlds old–that’s what happens when hearts intertwine: an exposing of history and a cultivating of fantasy that creates a something out of the rubble of nothing.
Petite, hurried feet; unmarred and naked shoulders; grains of sand in midnight hair like stars; the softness of her cashmere legs- perfection in his eyes, desperate for her to recognize it in her reflection. And she had never in her life felt as beautiful as she did through his eyes, she had never felt as soft as she did under his touch, her skin melting away from him not in an act of retraction, but in an act of surrender. Endlessness. The same skin was new and unexplored with every touch, the same eyes were remade in every passing minute of the evanescent light. And although it is consciously unrealistic to think to oneself, no one has felt the way I am feeling right now, it’s also important to let yourself believe it, to actually believe it. And maybe it’s true. There’s really no way to know–but they knew. In 187 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon, in the only secret haunt in the borough, they could feel that the intoxicating chemical cocktail racing through their minds- briefly shared- was new and permanent in an invisible history.
Later that evening long after he disappeared she returned to the rock searching for the remains of what they had shared. A feeling so strong, she convinced herself, was sure to leave a physical trace–yet it hadn’t. Invisible, immaterial to all but the sharp-eared skylarks under a starless night, a dragonfly found a hovel in an oak tree, and settled. Incessant wings ceased, and some unknowable dream flowed through it. Perhaps not its own. It isn’t easy to believe in what you cannot see, but it’s quite boring not to. So she closed her eyes, and she forced herself to believe. Because what else was there to do?
The stars weren’t visible from where she was–this was partially due to the resonant glow of the city surrounding the park, but mostly due to the foliage above her. But with her imagination, she carefully moved each individual branch, and she focused her eyes like a telescope, until constellations appeared before her. She smiled as she remembered the single time she had met him before the afternoon they shared in the park–he had pointed out the Little Dipper. Where’s the Little Dipper now, she whispered to herself. She walked home asking incessantly, where’s the Little Dipper now? As if answering, a fish leapt out of the water making a splash. In that moment, she found the stars on the surface of the water–no, maybe they weren’t stars, but they were things that sparkled, and maybe it was because she had a full heart, but in that moment, the sparkling surface of the water was the most beautiful starry sky she had ever seen. She even convinced herself that she found the Little Dipper.
At home lying in bed, she thought about the feeling of locking her eyes with his. ‘Locking eyes’ is indeed a phrase, but the moment their pupils find each other she can truly hear the click sound, something like a seatbelt–yes, a seatbelt. They are held in that moment, like the harness that holds you in your seat as you descend the peaks of a roller coaster. God knows it’s the same belly feeling. She blamed it on the dragonflies.
She felt sick to her stomach. She wasn’t quite sure why, but something felt wrong about convincing herself that the surface of the water was a sparkly sky. Just because two things are beautiful, she thought to herself, does not mean that one is the other. She said a silent I’m sorry to the water’s surface, and even to the sky. She said a silent thank you to the fish for creating the beautiful, however momentary, illusion. She will forever be grateful for the moment in which the sea was the sky and the sky was the sea, but remembered the importance of differentiating up from down.
And while most of what’s said about Central Park in the mid afternoon is true, most of truth goes hand in hand with illusion. We are creating our reality from scratch, are we not? She wasn’t mad at the dragonfly, or the fish, or the boy, or even herself. In fact, she was quite grateful to see the stars shine on a night they weren’t shining. But while a singular instance of an illusion can be a fantasy, a repetition of an illusion creates a state of delusion. I must let go of this fantasy, she thought to herself, to let it remain beautiful.
It felt like she got stabbed in the belly, and she couldn’t fall asleep. She was tossing and turning and tossing and turning. She closed her eyes and counted fish. Finally she lied on her back and gave up, and staring at the ceiling with wide open eyes, she let out a big sigh. That’s she heard the window unlatch—strange. She sat up in her empty apartment, illuminated only by the neon red glow of the clock above the stove that read 3:56 a.m.—exactly 12 hours after they arrived at the park that afternoon.
After a moment of being transfixed by the memory the time on the clock triggered, she remembered the mysteriously unlatched window. Standing up slowly, she walked towards the window. The wind from the window brushed her hair back away from her face—she continued towards the window. The wind from the window blew harder and harder—she continued towards the window. The wind from the window blew so hard that it knocked her off her feet and she was no longer able to continue towards the window.
She used her hands to break her fall when she was knocked onto her back by a gust of wind so grand it would challenge the sturdiest tree—she let out a gasp. Collecting her bearings, she sat and watched as a giant swarm of dragonflies filled the room above her head, the buzzing growing louder and louder. Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming, she said to herself. One of the dragonflies came down and gave her a bite on the cheek. She let out an ouch, and then chuckled.
And as if she were dreaming—and maybe she dreaming were—the swarm of dragonflies swept her off of the floor and out the window. She rode the swarm of dragonflies through the sky, and here she saw the Little Dipper so clearly that if the dragonflies let her stop for ice cream, she could have reached out to use it as a spoon. They then brought her to the lake in Central Park, the water’s surface that so much resembled the sky earlier that evening. She danced above the water’s surface, as if walking on water. The dragonflies were there to catch her every step—they already knew the choreography. The sun was rising.
Finally, the dragonflies brought her home. It was around 7 am, but she wasn’t tired, not one bit—in fact, she was ready to start her day. She brushed her teeth and she washed her face and as she looked in the mirror she thought about what she just learned: there’s nothing wrong with seeing the sky on the surface of the water, as long as you remember it’s merely a reflection—not the real thing. She touched her face in her own reflection right where the dragonfly bit her. It didn’t leave a mark, but she could still feel it a little bit.
That afternoon she returned to the rock once more. She lied there in the full afternoon light, under the weight of the sun’s heat—the temperatures had been at a record high, but she didn’t seem to mind. She lied there, wishing he was there lying with her, stroking her hair and reading her stories. Maybe next time I’ll read him this one. Is this fiction, she asked herself—then she heard its buzzing as it approached. Once again, in the exact same spot on, a dragonfly bit her on the cheek. Thank you.