Melancholy

I sketched her. I sat near the edge of the water. We were in Tulum, by the Gulf of Mexico. She wanted to swim. It was ice cold water so I told her I would just sit and draw. You go ahead, I said. She undressed to her underwear. There was nobody around. Our own paradise. She kicked some sand at me and ran way laughing. It actually made me kind of mad. But as she was about to jump into the water, walking deeper into it and with a tiny smile, she unhooked her bra and held her breasts covering them only with her hands. I wanted to take her then but the water was too cold. She dove in and broke the waves. She swam like a mermaid. and I stared at her, and I stared at the scenery and I took it all in. I took my pencil and drew the horizon split between the bright pink of the sky- not a cloud in sight and the endless blue of the ocean. I wished then I had brought my watercolors. Then I drew the waves breaking into the sand- slowly and repeatedly crashing the shore bursting into foam. Next the old boat that was at the edge abandoned. The paint was worn and seaweed had piled up beneath it. There wasn’t any animals in sight and I really wanted to draw an imaginary seagull here and maybe a crab there but I remained true to the image in front of me. She was looking back at me and I could see her running her hands through her hair as she threaded water half a mile away. She beckoned me to go with her. She was saying something but I couldn’t hear. A deep sadness took hold of me and I broke the tip of my pencil thinking of the first day I met her. I had felt like a puzzle missing a piece, forever incomplete. I figured I had found the right one to complete me, only to find out it was the wrong corner all along. Why do people yearn for others? If you would rip this primal need from me, uproot it from my core, I know I would be much happier. Look at her, what more could I ask for? I took the page and scratched whatever lead was left over everything. Ripped it and let the page scatter in the wind. If there was a rug, I’d sweep the pieces underneath and pick them up another day. Isn’t that the normal thing to do? She approached me and saw my litter but didn’t say a word. Let’s go I said, before it gets dark.