The Butterfly Effect

The enchanted doors of the tiny coffee shop swung open to a mysterious place. To me, it always felt like unlocking and discovering a paradise in a box. The cafe was redolent with the aromatic smell of freshly crushed coffee beans and oven-fresh pies. The mild incandescence of the paper lanterns gilded the little space with showers of synthetic sunlight, blanketing it with a diaphanous veil that hung there like golden mist on a heavenly morning. Its stucco overlay walls had been adorned with framed memories from the sixties: a photograph of The Beatles taken in 1968, the iconic image of Monroe over the subway grate with her billowing white dress and strawberry red smile, a quaint London rail clock, an assortment of gaudy magazine covers, and a few other unobtrusive dusty little memories. The owner of the shop sat in his usual corner, unshaven yet sober, with rectangular spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, and transfixed by his computer screen. The place was just big enough to accommodate around seven tiny wooden tables. We always preferred the table near the display case. It was the only one with a paper lamp, more importantly it was at a hand’s length from the small bookrack. The owner sauntered over to our table, like he always did whenever the waiters were too occupied, and wrote down our order with that ever welcoming smile of recognition. The café was abuzz with Lennon’s screeches of “Twist and shout..cmon cmon, c’mon, c’mon, baby, now. Come on and work it on out. “. His fantastically rasp voice almost smelt of cough drops.

My senses flew back to the nests of her squeaking beauty. I could discern her scent from the aroma of the place, Ah, so familiar, so erotic. My dormant inner beast opened an eye, scratched its hind then slumbered again. Her sudden imperceptible gesticulations set off hurricanes in my heart: the batting of her butterfly eyelids, the craning of her swanlike neck, the heaving of her full bosom. She had the eyes of a gazelle, in the darkness they vacillated like the rippled surface of a calm pond. If love could be seen, it would surely resemble that distinct look in her eyes. Jewels dangled from her ears like dew drops. They swayed like pendulums with chimes that resounded in my heart like church bells on a wedding night. If not for the presence of a small table between us we would've clung to each other like the praying hands of a devoted monk.

Ah, the elegant swish of her hands. They swooped down like seagulls trying to graze the ocean, and rose again like desert winds. Her Subliminal gestures crashed over me, like waves do against a rocky shoreline, triggering undertows beneath my skin. The occasional infantile yawns opened up a world that I usually swept with the tip of my tongue, nudging and pushing my way inside, till I could embrace her tongue with mine. If love could be tasted it would surely be the taste of her lips. The softness of her rosebud lips made every nerve in my body shiver like live electric wires, issuing sparks that rained down like drops of molten gold. Ah, the casual shrugs, the cherubic smiles, the adorable pouts. When she talked her lips bloomed, and then languidly morphed back to a bud. The sweet music of love could be heard in her solicitous words or when she confessed her love for me in those tuneful whispers . She was the fourth leaf of my three leaf clover.

Her brief moments of motionlessness, made my vertiginous heart plummet deeper and deeper into that abyss of love. It was like the world was running on electricity and someone had just pulled the plug. I, Pygmalion, implored Venus to breathe life into her so I could hold her, and she could hold me back, so I could kiss her, and she could kiss me back. Doused in that golden light, she appeared like a Greek Goddess save for a laurel wreath upon her head. Sitting there, gazing and marveling at her beauty, sifting through a sheaf of dreams, I felt my heart beat erratically. I wondered if this was how a man felt after a pacemaker was inserted in his heart, a dead heart brought back to life.

Every little gesture across the table brewed a storm in me, sucking me in, deeper and deeper: a vortex in my stomach, a whirlwind in my head, a hurricane in my heart, a blizzard under my skin. The dynamical nature of the heart is one too complex to comprehend, ever changing and capricious like the weather. It exhibits a complex chaotic behavior that eludes human intelligence. Our wax heart moulds and re-moulds itself time and again, ablaze with an eternal flame which keeps it from freezing.

I reached out and pulled a book out of the bookrack. It was a cookbook named “Try this and marry me”. I slid my hand over the words “Try this and”, and pushed the book in front of her. I saw that crazy kitten smile of hers cross her pretty face. Silence ensued. There is nothing more eloquent than silence, the serene silence between two lovers lost in fantasies. I wondered if her presence was a testimony of what saints called Divine providence. God’s little cameo. He was a humble little tritagonist in our mesmerizing musical. As the night grew darker, the café slowly unveiled itself to passersby on the streets, radiating like an open chest of gold. Outside the coffee shop, the moon rose, like God was opening an eye to look over his children, while we sat there under his watchful gaze, conjuring phantoms of our future selves and building dreamscapes.