Puzzle Pieces

           A seductive veil of coffee scent en-wraps us as we move into the dark cafe and the last ray of outside light leaves our sun-warmed bodies. The cafe lights are subtle, ready for employment by the photographers that should be capturing the elegant bodies draping themselves around the place reading poetry, like living art installations, emulating the sage and sophisticated paintings above them. The paintings are the kind that you want to snatch off their nails, carefully of course, and hang in your own home. They are the kind that make young artists rejoice at the magnitude of possibilities and despair at the re-creation of anything quite so compelling.
           We sit in an elevated window area, at one of the intricate spindly tables decorating the room, and I suddenly remember that this is where I sat two years ago with that other boy, sipping the same bittersweet drink as today. He was one of the only people who would have chosen such a place to meet, maybe that's why I picked it today. Images of that summer flicker through my mind unbidden: the chess board between us, my violin case, the sensation of melting into the couch listening to his piano serenades, walking in the park Errol Flynn once strode through in green tights.  
           I feel jarred out of my connection with the person seated across from me. This person, with the twin seascape eyes framed in black lashes, so different from that other boy who was made beautiful by horn-rimmed glasses, those windows to the soul revealing him scared and small without their shielding lenses. This person, with the soft voice which seems to listen even as he is speaking. This person, who I knew was beautiful even when we first met, his face and all his feelings hidden under a beard, overgrown hair, a hat, now discarded like outgrown clothes. This person who, when I walk with him, puts me under a sort of spell, a warm golden glow of companionship.
           I do not want to compare this person with that memory of another boy, I only want to feel this luxurious softness in the air which accompanies him everywhere. I only want to experience these moments as whole, complete and heavenly. I only want the puzzle pieces to fit this time.