by e. hooper

How do I begin?  I saw it at the old Granary.  The face – his face – looked familiar, familial.  Long, slow to smile, downturned eyes, brown hair (greying, thinning).

Just for a moment.  I saw it.  I saw him.  It.  Him.

And there I was, looking for my family – the couple of them who were left, who weren’t yet off to college, starting families, tied up with friends.  Wife and child.  Two of them.

It was me, wandering through the high-ceilinged, brick-walled drafts of the old Granary.

Booths of the summer’s honey harvest and apple cider and handmade tree ornaments and the elderly woman, too, who comes every year to sell decades’ worth of dolls (rag, porcelain, wood, all smelling like mothballs and attic-crowded memories).  Hunched and bent, she is there with her crates and crates of dolls set out on slightly yellowing table linens.  (Those linens, too, are worn thin with the memories whose elbows it has held, it has freighted, it has lingered beneath… memories and elbows… yellowed linens.)

Through the booths of children’s books and hand-made pillows and hand-crafted cheeses.  Around the corners and stands of honey-glazed cashews and almonds and past the kitchen where they’re boiling kielbasa and kraut.

I saw it.  Him.  Long face.  Downturned eyes.  He, too, was looking.  Just like me, he comes to look for someone forgotten or someone remembered.  He stands with eyes brimming with memory, wet like old men’s eyes get when they catch a draft.  I’ve seen him before.  Last year.  Maybe three years before that.  I see him.  I’ve seen him.  There’s a stand with hand-cut mirrors.  Framed mirrors.  Christmas-themed mirrors.  Smoked mirrors.  I walk past the stand and – there – I see him.  And then he’s gone.  I close my eyes and breathe.  The place smells of roasted nuts and evergreen.  I stand with my eyes closed and breathe.  And I know that he is gone.  Until next year.  Or the year after that.  Or maybe ten years hence.