I walked to a nearby park to read in the early afternoon. I hadn’t taken a seat in those soft steel benches in a very long time. The sunlight was a cold, pale yellow.

In this park stands a sort of small stage, built by the neighborhood a couple of years ago. Musicians have stood underneath its tilted roof during festivities. People have crowded the place, lain in blankets and seated in chairs, watching the glitter of string lights as it dripped on the grass. The smell of cheap pizza has wafted along the bass and the drumming. Those were the nights.

Today I saw a little girl, alone on the stage. She twirled with the sun on her hair and her face. There were other children nearby, grouped together, but she had chosen to spin on that stage by herself. When she saw me she hid behind one of the columns that supported the tilted roof. I began to read. Once in awhile I’d look up at the cloudless sky and breathe in the sharp coolness of the outdoors. Every time, the little girl ran behind a new column. She was laughing, enjoying herself.

She had a unique style, this girl, and with every little glance I threw in her direction, as a way to participate in the game she had started, I caught a new detail. She wore a big pink bow on the crown of her head. She hid behind a column. I read, looked up. She wore a black shirt with a white cat. She ran, giggling. I flipped the page, looked again. Her skirt carried a vast multitude of colors. She blocked the sunlight with heart-shaped shades.

I thought, I can’t forget her, and I sketched her on a notebook scarcely the size of my hand, with a blue pen, but by the time I lifted my eyes to send her on another race for the columns she had jumped down from the stage and trotted across the grass, around the bench, and away. Her hair broke into a gold-white wave behind the big pink bow.

I always carry a notebook along. I’m always on my toes. Because I’ve learned that life doesn’t freeze in ideal moments and allow you to capture more than one fragment of it. One piece. One speck of dust worth bottling up in a glass jar. One little thing to remember.

I have forgotten her. All I could capture was the shape of the big pink bow. The memory of her is reduced to some lines of blue ink, crowded together, indistinguishable and inadequate.

Maybe I’ll see the little girl again some day, and she’ll hide behind the columns and giggle, and I’ll duck my head, read some lines, and look up. I won’t try to sketch her again. Life is quick, unstoppable. I don’t have the skill required to copy it into a notebook scarcely the size of my hand.

Copyright © Blanca Parga 2020