Soulmates

Sitting ways apart, they both look precisely upon the very spot where the paint has crinkled into a winking eye. They stare deep into that spot searching for the emptiness that is perfection. Having achieved it, their souls wispily float to and fro, gently ebbing with the tide of conversation that fills the coffeehouse. Like most people, the souls shy away from the blinding midday sun, carving out comfortable niches of shade in which they can rest gently and listen without having to perk their ears. The souls throw themselves lightly against the same wall - and they stick like paintings overseeing the vibrant storyteller and his posse of caffeine-heads. Lounging about, they crack smiles as the moment of truth is reached by the protagonist in Ahab's story. Graciously, almost intentionally, they extend their hands until they meet, clasping each other's soul-fingers and soul-palms like they've being doing it for all of time. Suspended like two figures in this painting of which their corporal representations catch a momentary glimpse as clear as day, for a fleeting moment so brief that they both could mistake it for sunspots on their retinas. But they don't. Whispering to himself, he questions what he saw. Hearing the faint whisper like in an acoustician's masterpiece of architecture, she grows her earlobes to Disneyesque proportions to hear.

Did I just see that? "Myself with a beautiful woman?" his whispers ponder. Her eyes lower. She shrinks her ears and softly speaks in an audible tone, "Yes."

He looks around, startled like a squirrel, and furtively pauses on each female face. Half-way through his line-up, he tells the D.A., "That's her." Studying her every movement, he captures her imagination as much as she does his, his deep eyes penetrating through her flesh, reaching bone, blood, ventricule, and neuron. Even at the elemental level, she has grace: her red blood cells sway, her endorphins swim, even her gastrointestinal acids dance. But her real beauty is taken as a whole, inescapable, inimitable, and indisintegratable. Looking back at the spot on the wall, he sees her silhouette and over Ahab's shoulder he sees her effigy smilingly in a Da Vinciesque manner, her hand in his own.

A Cypriot he surmises. A long way from home - and yet so naturally in her place. He covers his imagination with a shroud of reason and sits upright in his chair, waiting for his coffee to cool down. He has a reminiscence of his childhood - his mother used to bring him to this very spot as a baby. He smiles a baby smile.

She can't believe her eyes- transfixed is she by the representation of herself in a painting in this coffeehouse in San Francisco, thirteen-thousand kilometres away from Nicosia. The hair in its long curls could have been hers, so lifelike was the way the paint kisses the canvas. The gentle smile she thought she never had astonishes her. She rediscovers the small kink in the bridge of her nose in the same way she does when she wakes up every morning. Her eyes venture North and South, East and West until she sees him for the first time. A man holding her hand, in a way that she had never had it held; and yet in a way she had hoped for all her life. She sees the love in his heart by looking at the way his fingers cusp hers. She feels his concern and empathy in his posture. She appreciates his reason and logic as she looks into his eyes. She knows she has been with him forever and yet she doesn't know why.

Still ways apart, they both look precisely upon the very spot where their souls meet. And suddenly, he gets up, walks over and takes her hand in his.