Edited by: Geetanjali Roy
“You know how in books, there are sometimes different perspectives?”
Paula’s quiet, rueful tone burst the adrenaline-dependency bubble that had settled around Lia. She turns to see her friend gazing at the red-brick buildings, a small smile on her face. The last flickering lights of the sunset cast a sheen on her glassy eyes.
She’ll get dry eyes if she keeps up the staring contest, Lia thinks.
She knows what’s caused this. Lia lets out a weary sigh, glaring accusingly at the gold-stained paperback sitting forgotten on Paula’s lap.
“This is why I tell you to not re-read that damn Madeline Miller book!”
“Just answer the question!”
Lia needs more caffeine. Black, opaque, no sugar. Before she can reach for the plastic cup, Paula snatches it up and takes a sip, grimacing instantly. Good, Lia thinks. Serves you right.
“You seriously need to decaf Lia. And no, this is not about Patrochilles.”
Lia raises a brow.
“You know how in books, sometimes we can see the same story unfolding through the eyes of different characters?”
The distant look is back on Paula’s face. She’s staring longingly at the horizon.
“I wish I could have their perspective. The ones who never got to tell their stories.”
“Who do you mean?”
Paula’s words ring like a song in Lia’s ears, “People like us. From a different time. Whose love was disguised and lost in pages of history.”
The vibrant freshers wobble in and out of the university buildings. The autumn winds weave through Paula’s hair, a serene smile still in place as she watches. Lia has always watched her from the sidelines. A self-constructed boundary that just couldn’t be cut down. But now they sit together. She wonders what Paula sees when she looks at her.
“You wish you could have their perspective,” Lia says lightly, causing Paula to look at her before she continues, “I wish I could have yours.”
Another Time
She sits next to him. Not next to her, Sappho thinks disdainfully, eyeing the wasted space on the klinai. That man beside her seems to be God’s equal. Tanned skin, calloused hands, an impish smile. He looks like a sailor. She speaks in a lilting voice and he listens to her raptly.
Does she crave the beguiling depths of the sea? Does she know salt water can be an insidious thing?
She laughs at something he says. A tinkling sound that makes Sappho’s heart flutter, like a thousand of Venus’s doves flapping their wings at once. She wants to tell her that the sea is scarring, like the man. She’ll be rendered a haunted shell just like the charming words he doesn’t mean.
Oh, but words are words, my dearest love. Sappho thinks.
Only mimicking the shadows of the unreachable truth.
I could show you. I would write you in my best verse.
The woman looks at her. Sappho thinks she’ll run to the beaches from the force of it. Feel the damp, salty air on her skin. She hopes her eyes speak her mind as she returns the woman’s gaze. I’ll be by the seas tossing pennies, begging for a piece of you.
—
“That damned sailor who ploughs the raging waves will find no treasure that holds a candle to your embrace.”
As Sappho looks at her, she can see the mischief in her eyes glinting in the candlelight. She scoffs at her, and the woman bursts into giggles. Sappho’s frown slowly smooths, turning into a smile.
Her eyes are darker than she thought, shimmering with a kind of carelessness Sappho envies.
“What do you see, my lady?”
You, Sappho wants to say. Slender limbs, fern-like braids, shaking with laughter like scuttering squirrels and sparrows. How are you so full of noise?
When she doesn’t answer, the woman looks at her longingly.
“I wish I could see with your eyes,” she says lightly.
Sappho reaches out a hand to cup her face, thumb caressing the hollow under her eye.
“And I wish I could see from yours.” Sappho wants to find her in all the waters of time, from rain to rivers and down into the seas. Even in unsparing storms, in all imaginable worlds, “I’ll find you again.”
Another Life
“What are you thinking again?” Lia asks playfully.
Paula had been zoning out. Lia wondered if that was her natural disposition sometimes. Dreamy, untethered.
“Something I felt during our trip to Jamali-Kamali,” Paula says.
Oh yeah, they visited the Sufi poet’s tomb a few days back. Lia could feel the history in the air, in the earth, in her bones. The history of love. She wondered if the two lovers stood on the balcony every morning, listening to the chatter below.
“What did you feel?”
Paula’s eyes are gleaming, uncannily familiar, “Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us.”
In a daze, Lia feels the softness of the klinai under her fingers, the salty air, the scent of the flower beds, and her. A woman. Her hair hanging in ringlets.
She looks at Paula like she knows her now—more than before. Paula’s voice sounds mingled with another. Older, from another time.
“I found you.”
Lia takes a shuddering breath and giggles. “I see you.”
Inspired by Fragment 31 and Fragment 147 by Sappho.