When You Meet the Blue Man

On the way home after tomorrow’s dentist appointment, you’ll meet a man sitting at the bus stop by the crossroads. The cavities in your back teeth will have been dug out and newly filled with silver. Busy tonguing the strangely smooth metal plating in your molars, you won’t be looking out for him, but he’ll know who you are—even if he doesn’t know it yet. As you walk towards him, he’ll feel the incessant tap of a thousand fingers on his shoulder blade.

You’ll feel drawn to sit beside him. For some purposeful, unknowable reason, you’ll choose his right side. He’ll turn his left cheek towards you; you’ll notice the texture of his skin, something like a layer of smooth river clay, calm and quiet like sandstone.

He won’t say anything until the bus never arrives.

“I like your coat.” His voice will sound familiar, as if some ancient spell had drilled his vocal tones into your skull, each crevice in your ear made for sonorous recognition. Wind chimes in your mind will sing, Old soul, old soul, old soul.

You’ll feel the shape of his soul—halved and holy like the moon with its many craters, radiating an old and hard-learned kind of reflection, existing somewhere between his self and His world, always facing the sun.

You’ll draw back your hood, a thing sewed from old grey rabbits. You’d stolen the coat from Ma Lucinda, a woman you met in the Californian redwoods, who was deeply fearful of mountain lions and lit campfires in her tents. Once, on meth, she thought her fingers were sprouting earthworms as she showed you the frayed edges of the band-aids wrapped around her fingertips. She told you to steal the grey rabbit coat from her, to take on the widow’s curse. You didn’t believe in the widow’s curse—or any kind of curse, really—but you liked the soft grey fur. And so the coat was yours.

“Thanks. It wasn’t mine.”

He’ll tilt his head to the side. “Well, now it is, isn’t it?”

The cold air will be oddly still for a Boston winter; not a whisper in the early darkness. You’ll think of Ma Lucinda’s favourite saying: Never be a bee when there are flowers around. Wasps are the cure to any disease. Honey melts like time in your hand, but you shouldn’t eat it when you’re not hungry.

You’ll think of repeating this to the man, but you won’t, in fear it’ll only sound crazy.

He’ll look at you with a smile in his brown eyes, big like a baby calf’s, absorbing the world in two directions.

What Ma Lucinda had meant was this: Be careful around strangers. In this world, it’s not clear who’s who until you know for sure, and only time will tell. You don’t have to learn the hard way anymore, just take it slow. Things become obvious over time, so be patient, and every true color will show.

His left eye will twitch and blink shut as if a fly had flown into it.

“Who are you?” he’ll ask.

Three nets will cast out from your subconsciousness and weigh in on his being, probing into the black ocean ice drowning his past, the warm coffee bean enveloping his present, and the uncertain green cliffs ranging his future.

“I don’t know,” you’ll lie, nervous in the face of familiarity. “Will you tell me?”

When you smile, he’ll see the silver mirrors like ice caps on your teeth and lean in for a kiss.

The blueness of his being, like the cool waters of the Nile, like a single thread unraveling from the fishing line of his heart, will spool down your tongue and trace the back of your throat, coiling safely in your voice box, anchoring deeply in the recesses of your heart, leaving a sting.

Electricity will sing in your back molars, vibrating your silver tooth-plating, a reverberant zing circling the back of your mouth; you’ll realise why Bluetooth is a way to describe connectivity.

When he pulls away, you’ll feel tugged forward, as if someone used a hotel sewing kit to sew your skins together. It won’t be some mild, delicious pain. You’ll feel a red burn, the wholeness of yearning, equal to the blue flame hiding openly in his ribcage.

“And who are you?” you’ll ask.

He’ll take your hand, pick out your pointer finger and trace the six long scars around his throat, each concentric circle forming a necklace of grey worms.

“I’m you, my love.”