Her blue eyes matched the backdrop of this perfect evening, which held blushing clouds and the promise of soon-stars. She said to me: “This is where I want to fall in love!” We were out on her balcony, eating warm empanadas off of a chair between us. It was quiet. The moment was extraordinarily sincere.
“There are so many places here,” she continued, “where I want to fall in love.” She had spent the day spontaneously in the Brooklyn Botanical gardens, and was indulging my desire for vicarious experience. Through the lilts and murmurs of her bright voice, I was with her, staring out at hundreds of cherry blossoms, lying in a field, and longing for some spark with a stranger.
“It’s not just in places like that, like parks and gardens,” she explained, “but when I walk through the city at night sometimes…” and I could see those twinkling Manhattan streets, dark shroud pulled over the dirt and leaving beauty, buildings telling you how tiny you were and convincing you this whole city existed for you!
When you’re in this beautiful place, surrounded by lovely, full people and promise, there is an aching longing for it to stick in an intimate way. There’s a longing for your world to collide with someone sharing the view, then to never separate, and for the beauty of the moment to be immortalized as part of your story. And your heart is profoundly soft and vulnerable, staring out at your dreams and fears, across the water or in the garden or up at the stars. And your hands feel empty and awkward, like they were meant for holding. And she said it so sweetly and sighingly: “Those are the places I want to fall in love.”