Guiding

The year after, I started at Wilfrid Laurier University back home. It was through this that I met Louise, and experienced a longing for someone I have never replicated since. I hear in my heart her voice singing Nuit d’étoiles, shifting to a staccato English to criticize my inability to follow her, praising me in French when all was well. She was from the Conservatoire in Lyon, and would be gone at the end of the semester. I wanted her in ways I still know not how to put on the page, but it was never to be. I had a girlfriend, and she a boyfriend; furthermore, my learning that she had an abortion caused in me a sorrow that always colored my strong feelings for her. Of course the most important obstacle was that she loved me not, but can a man not dream that a part of her indeed loved me back? Never shall I forget the afterglow of performing with her on stage to a mostly empty auditorium at midday, then the thrill of conversation with her and Alysse, the latter wearing elaborate makeup that revealed not the face I would later come to know.