It begins on the banks of the Tigris. Our hands had touched, and when I recoiled, you laughed, placing your basin beside mine. For a moment, I thought that I had never heard such a joyous sound. I tried to busy myself with pulling reeds from the soft clay at our feet, but your eyes kept finding mine, playful and glinting in the sun. Eventually, your ankles sank into the mud closer to mine, and I felt warm, despite the cool water around us. The cylinder seal at your throat was carved with some animal that I could not name, and you had leaned in close, eager to show me. I nodded dumbly, staring at the rust-colored stains on your fingers instead, completely overwhelmed by your nearness. Every day after that, when the river was at its laziest, we met on the bank. My family grew curious as to why my trips to fill our basin became longer and longer. It pained me when every day, the river washed away the clay stains your fingers left on my skin. During the early hours, I pressed the signs of your name into the wet softness of my clay tablet. I started to exist only for our meetings. One day you didn’t come to the river. When I traced your path back to the village, I found you, clay-stained fingers lying upturned in the dirt. There was a small rocky outcrop that we clambered up often, the brightest blooms at its edge. You must have stopped for some that day and lost your footing at the top, the soil loose and crumbling from the dry spell we had been having. I sit with you there, pressing the clay from your hands onto mine until the vultures come. I don’t remember much from the rest of my time in that village, that life. As in most lives, I feel as if I died when you did.
In the next life, we meet at the market in Pasargadae. I don’t recognize you at first, a halo of dark curls around your head and a deep green skirt hiding your ankles from me. But then a hot piece of meat slips from the spit in your hand, and that laugh shoots through the stalls and strikes me in the heart. I start asking to be taken to the market all the time. It takes you a moment to recognize me, handing over the hot food without looking. But a smile like the sun stretches across your face when our hands touch briefly in the exchange, and after that, you ply me with conversation every time I visit the stall. First, its to ask if my chaperone is interested in a new lamb supplier, then it's to tell me of the new perfumes the stall down the street has. Each time I hide my smiles behind my scarf, fidgeting with the ends of my braid whenever you lean in close. You brush at the pearls in my hair and shower me with compliments, cutting me off when I attempt to return them. Instead of clay staining your fingers, in this life, it's soot from the coals you cook over. I treasure whenever it stains my too clean hands. I find an excuse to stay longer each time. Eventually, we begin to sneak behind the clay oven in the corner, my hands anxious to undo the ties of your blouse. Until one day, your father catches us and my braid slips from your fingers as we spring apart. The next moon comes and goes and I am not allowed to visit the market again. They find me a wealthy man to marry and I keep my eyes on the ground as he inspects me. I feel like the meat your soot-stained fingers sell every day. The next time I see you, ten years have passed and I feel small in the face of your brightness. Children and time have stolen the youth from my eyes and your father’s tight fist is gone. But you are still the same, taking me to the corner where the oven still stands to feed me sweet juice and tangle our fingers together. I feel more alive than I have in ages. We see each other only twice more before age steals through my braid and eats at my eyes. Somehow my children know to send for you when I lay clinging to life. I am more thankful than ever in that moment, at peace knowing your eyes are the last ones I see.
In the next life, I know your face from the moment I can walk. Every family is familiar with the crown prince. Every piece of good luck this dynasty has, the court scribes attribute to you. Your strength, intelligence, beauty. I push to the front of the crowd at each festival in Xuchang, eager to glimpse you from the ground. Light from the sparklers glints in your eyes as you look over the crowd. The curtains covering your palanquin do nothing to hide your beauty. I am one of hundreds below you, and yet it feels as if our eyes meet. The polite smile painted on your face fades and for a moment, I know you feel the tug that I do. The Emperor’s litter moves on and I stay in the lantern-lit street long after the crowd has moved on. When I next glimpse you it's on the eve of war. Your noble profile cuts through the regiment on horseback, shoulders burdened with wrought-iron armor and the expectations of the kingdom. I stand at attention with countless others, eyes never leaving your figure. As you speak to inspire the others I think treasonous thoughts. I don’t want to claim victory for the Emperor, I wish to claim victory for you. Our hands touch for the first time on the battlefield. You clutch my bloodied palms to your chest, rattled no doubt by the arrow protruding from my side, the hook in my stomach jerks when we finally touch. I watch as you feel it too, tears filling those lovely eyes as words spill out of you in a rush, shouts and cries asking where I had been and why I had taken the shot meant for you, eaten up by the smoldering field. I am strangely calm throughout it all, only saying I am sad I could not hear your laugh in this life. That at least, brings a watery smile to your face, elegant fingers holding onto the bloody hand I’ve brought up to hold your cheek. Despite your pleas to stay, as my vision darkens, I can only sigh in happiness at the feeling of finally being in your arms again.
Time slips by and we meet over and over. In one life you are a long stemmed tulip and I the bee that keeps returning, somehow drawn to you, nestled in your petals day after day until you die. In another I am a crocodile and you the bird that perches on my scaly skin, I spend more time floating near the surface than any of my sisters waiting for you to land on me. In a different life I am a bedraggled notebook with care worn pages and one day a new pen writes on my pages. Inexplicably I know the pen is you, and every day after I wait anxiously for your ink to touch the pages. Somehow without fail, we both know every time as if there is an echo of music only we can hear… a chorus that sounds as soon as you come near.
But sometimes I can’t find you. Lifetimes flash before me in a dull blur and people come and go. None of them are right, none of them are you. Until finally one day you burst into my life. I fill the paper cup in my hands with syrup, practiced mindless movements guiding my hands as I make someone’s whipped caramel concoction. The sound of the steamer must mask the bell that usually announces a new customer coming through the door because when I turn around, I am not expecting to see someone peering at the glass pastry case. I set down the finished drink and don’t even hear the person who thanks me. Instead, like a moth to a flame, I drift to the register and try not to stare as you deliberate between muffins. Somehow this time, I just know it’s you. When you raise your head to order a drink, our eyes finally meet, and it's me who smiles first. In this life, no soot or clay stains your fingers and no armor encases your shoulders, but I recognize them all the same. I think you must too as the wrapped muffin slips from your hand when I smile. When the dropped muffin startles a laugh out of me you smile too, and I promise myself right there that this time nothing will stop me from spending at least one lifetime with you.
