Once upon a time, nearly twenty minutes down the road from Don Ernesto’s casa para peregrinos acerca y lados, I declared that I would find myself a wooden companion. A stick to match my every stride. Seven minutes passed before I found her. Meet Maria, a freshly trimmed limb with an enthusiastic clap against the concrete. Hardly enough time to digest the generous offering of chocolate filled biscuits and cafe from earlier that morning.. sitting next to Aušra, the only person I’ve ever met from Lithuania, and across from a marijuana-loving, guitar-playing English guy named Jordan, Maria came into my life like a double-scoop ice cream cone on the hottest day of summer. Oh god had I been dreaming of her, longing for her to melt into my palm. A perfect fit. As soon as her slender figure slipped into my hands, I couldn’t help but fantasize about our life together over the coming weeks. What I couldn’t imagine though, was that our time might be cut short.
I saw the two of us in Santiago. She would stand over me while I’m down on my knees before the eyes of Saint James, tears falling from my cheeks to meet the cobblestone street below.
Maria and I spent two days together. With her body in rhythm with mine, I sang her songs that no one else has ever heard. I told her my secrets. She knows that I envy every robin singing in the trees. They fly on while I’m rooted here in the ground. Oh, how quickly is grow a pair of wings if I could. Wings to carry me to the mountain tops and sail the currents of the storm.
I stare off into the snowy peaks, giving them each a name. Crying out, “Isabella, how can I find a way to meet you?” And verses like, “How did you get so far away? What does the world look like from above?” But the song always ends with the same words, even though it starts on a different note. It ends like this, “Robin, take me with you. Why wont you come back for me?”
The end of the song was the end of Maria and I’s love affair. I snapped her in half between my legs. It was over. And to think that just three winding hills earlier, we kissed the rain and stormed the beach. Bracing each other tight as the waves tickled our feet. White caps breaking against the shore. Maria parted the sea with her wooden bones. I stood behind her. She made me feel brave staring out across the water. I thought of the tumbling mists that take ships to the ocean floors at night. She was a warm hand on my shoulder.