FRANCIS AND THE SEAGULL

AND THE URN:

SHOME DASGUPTA

I was looking at this branch, and I always thought it was a branch, until it flew away and it was then did I realize that it wasn’t a branch at all, but some type of bird. Not sure what kind of bird, because I wasn't a birdist, but it was brown and green, and I watched it fly away until it disappeared behind the large water tower.

So I started to look at the water tower and wondered about Francis. Francis was a tall, slender character, with short, curly blue hair; he kind of looked like a character from Fraggle Rock. I spent time with this guy four years ago, but I haven’t spent time with him since, because he moved to Thailand. I didn’t move to Thailand, because I was afraid of elephants. I was afraid of elephants, because when I went to the zoo, I saw this polar bear, and I had mistaken it for an elephant, and I was always afraid of bears.

Francis. Francis never spoke; he never walked or ran, or ate or jumped, or slept, and he was never awake. He was just always there. Every time I looked for him, he was always at the cafe, reading a book, drinking a coffee, or just staring at branches. I never talked to him, but we would sit side by side enjoying each other’s silence. I remember once, some lady asked Francis what book he was reading, and he just looked up and gave her the book. She looked at it and put it back on the table, not realizing that Francis was trying to tell her that he was in love with her. I knew this, because a couple of years later, a duck led me to his diary buried beneath a treasure chest in a lake by a pond at the park. In it was just one sentence, dated on that day he met that lady, and the sentence read, “I’m in love with a lady but I can’t talk to her, because her smile froze my lips.”

As I thought about it, I was glad that I was there to share such a great moment with Francis--the blind man who never spoke. I carried that feeling with me where ever I went, that feeling that he had for that lady, sparked within seconds of contact. It kept me alive, and in hope, that one day my mouth wouldn't be able to open either.

I wasn't really sure if Francis was in Thailand, playing with the elephants. I would like to think so, but sometimes I believed that he was in an urn, held by the beak of a seagull, gliding over the ocean, waiting for his mouth to thaw.