The Lady With The Rainbow Smiles

It is raining cats and dogs these days upon us these days and as I hurry to get into the elevator, I notice a quiet lady clad in the most beautiful of blues fall in step beside me. My eyes travel up to her face and I recognize her by the dazzle of a thousand diamonds dancing in her mocha eyes. Oh yes, it is her! She is back! My heart does a little dance in my chest. Then she notices me too and says a little hi with the most beautiful of smiles.Her smile, oh her smile. Have you ever seen a rainbow unfurl itself slowly, bit by tantalizing bit on a clear blue sky? That is what her smiles look like.

Each day I observe her as she immerses herself in her work, her gossamer hair falling over the side of her face like a glorious waterfall of black silk. And the wonder of wonders, she is utterly oblivious to her own beauty! She gives me a shy smile as I call her cute and then hurries off to finish some other task. I am suddenly hit by the vivid image of a butterfly. A colorful, busy, bewitchingly, exquisitely beautiful butterfly; who totters from flower to flower, totally unaware of the breath that stops in the chest of the one who beholds it.  

I remember that it is her birthday in a few days and as I look out of the window, I see heavens shower us heavily. Suddenly, the rain stops and I witness a magical rainbow spread over the stunned sky. How apt, I think for the Gods to give to the world the Lady with the rainbow smiles in this season of rainbows. 

In A Bookstore

There are sections that a Bookstore has and there are sections in the bookstore that we see. Italo Calvino made a fabulous list of all the sections that we see in a bookstore:

“- Books You Haven’t Read
– Books You Needn’t Read
– Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
– Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
– Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
– Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
– Books Too Expensive Now and You’ll Wait ‘Til They’re Remaindered
– Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
– Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
– Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too
– Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages
– Books You’ve Been Hunting for Years Without Success
– Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment
– Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case
– Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
– Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
– Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
– Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read
– Books You’ve Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”

My Stranger

I have never seen you before, but somehow I know you are there, somehow I know that I will recognize you when the time is right. They call me a fool, an emotional idiot to believe in the movie-ish concept of soul mates. I don’t know if you are my soul mate or not, but some part of me knows that you alone have the answers to questions that float in my eyes, invisible to everyone else.

Somehow, some part of my heart knows that maybe in some other life, some other form, you have held my hand and taken me on a blissful voyage where we have discovered exotic pleasures together. Maybe we were Romeo and Juliet, dying in each others embrace or maybe we were Antony and Cleopatra, ruling our small world together.

I don’t know you yet, don’t even know your name yet, but in some part of my heart I know we will meet soon, and the sound of your heartbeat will become music to my ears and together we will become a masterpiece. I don’t know if there is or if there ever was a happily ever after for us but I do know that there is a happiness that only we can share and it will last us for all our lifetimes, sustaining us in moments of utter gloom.

Yes, you are a stranger to me yet, but you are my stranger and I can hardly wait for you to reveal yourself.