Waving Goodbye

The world bends us to its purpose. In the public gardens, we found a “gazing globe” balanced on a waist-high pedestal, a silver ball a foot in circumference, reflecting sky and ground, ourselves as we stood above it. We stared into its depths, as in a crystal ball, our faces large and wild, arms and legs unnaturally small, as if a spell were on the world, or, finally, we clearly saw the world for what it was: too brightly shining, circular, unadorned. Trees bent toward us, mere shadows of themselves, their shadows more substantial than the trees themselves. The sky at one o’clock a milky white, light-filled, yet without sun or cloud. And beds of tulips rising from the groundswell, each one a little mouth. I knelt beside you on one knee, caught up in walls of air I couldn’t touch or see, the outer world around me wavering, as on a hot summer day. We looked out to the future. Our future selves. You stood dead center in the globe and raised your hand to stop the scene, your palm enlarging until it dwarfed the tallest trees. Then waving goodbye, we walked, as a joke, backward and away, farther and farther away— the globe still gazing on us— leaving ourselves behind to live forever in that silver room, to watch and spy on lovers like ourselves.