Oblong

By Christine Brandel

Tonight I met Lindsay. She’s going to mean something in my life. I just don’t know what yet.

When I closed my blinds earlier, I saw a woman heading into my back yard. She was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans and glasses that looked thick and nerdy. That was my first impression. I hope we can laugh about that one day.

I don’t really like strangers on my property, so I stepped outside to take some kind of stand. But she was gone. For a moment, I wondered if I had imagined her. I walked around the house and saw her down the sidewalk a bit.

“Have you lost a pet or something?” I called.

She walked down my driveway. She walked right up to me. “There was a dog running around in the street. He ran back behind your house. I was just looking for him. I don’t know who he belongs to.”

“That’s bad,” I said, because I hate seeing a dog in the road.

“My name’s Lindsay,” she said. She said it like she’d been meaning to meet me one day. “I live across the street.”

Somehow I was shaking her hand – she must have put hers out because that’s not a move I’d have made. “Are those your new gardens then?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. Our hands had stopped shaking by the time she’d said this.

“I’ve admired them from afar,” I said.

“It was nice to meet you,” Lindsay said. Her glasses weren’t thick at all. They were beautiful because she was beautiful.

I went back into my house and continued my night. When I got into bed, I thought about Lindsay. I turned on my side so I faced the window that faced her house. I wondered if she was thinking about me. I wondered if she even had an inkling about the importance of this night.

I opened my bedside cabinet and dug out a journal I rarely wrote in. I scribbled the date at the top of the page and then put, “Tonight I met Lindsay. She’s going to mean something in my life.”

One day, I’ll dig it out again and show it to Lindsay who’ll be lying next to me. She’ll read what I wrote and love me for it.

– Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. She published Tell This To Girls: The Panic Annie Poems in 2013. She is a PopMatters columnist and rights the wrongs of the world via her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.