Anna, Love Séamus

Winner, Writing Magazine

‘I thought men aren’t supposed to do love.’ Those were Anna’s first words to me.

I am Séamus – a thinker, a watcher, a listener. I am serious, I guess. Some may misinterpret me as a melancholic pessimist, but I am easy to misinterpret. Quietness often does that.

There are many things I don’t expect to happen in my life. I don’t expect to win anything. I don’t expect to live long. I don’t expect children to like me. I don’t expect people to tell me they have enjoyed my poetry; I don’t expect anyone to read it. I don’t expect eye contact. I don’t expect God to answer my prayers. And I don’t expect unknown women to speak to me in the back corners of cafés.

I didn’t expect Anna.

She arrived, tearing the shafting light from the shop’s miniature cottage windows into two. I could see the shape of a woman and hear the sound of a woman, but the detail was lost in the blinding sunshine. And I could find no words for this faceless being, hovering above me. My tongue fastened in a knot of incomprehension and surprise, like a little boy being admonished for something he was doing that he had no idea was wrong.

‘The book,’ she said, pointing to my hands. ‘Four Letters of Love.’
I glanced down and understood.
‘May I?’ she said, putting her hand on the chair opposite me.
‘Please…,’ was all that I could force through my lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but it’s unusual to see a man reading a book about love.’
‘It’s written by a man,’ I said.
‘Does that make a difference?’

As she sat, her face appeared and I could feel the first stamps of her imprint on my soul. Summer hair, a seaside smile and eyes brimming with inquisition.

‘I think it does,’ I said, finding some composure, now that I could properly see the possessor of the bewitching voice.
‘Why?’ She tilted her head and hooked her hair behind her ear with a smooth stroke of a polished fingernail.
‘Men write about love differently,’ I said.
She stopped stirring her coffee and was staring at the teaspoon, thinking. ‘Sweet love.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Women write about sweet love. What do men write about?’
‘I think men write about love as they’ve experienced it, but women write about the kind of love they’d like to experience.’

She looked at me then. Really looked at me. I think I must have interested her, but it made me shrivel in a flame of uncertainty.

‘I’m Anna,’ she said, and held out her hand.

I took it in mine, shook it and felt her softness. She smelt of the sea.