premonitions

every tuesday and thursday salome and i go for cafe cortados, mine with sugar, hers with whole milk, at cafe haiti, a cafe con piernes and the girls all wear short, tight dresses and too much make up and no matter what time of day it is, the bar is always full of men in suits, cleaning ladies smoking cigarettes or smartly dressed ladies gossiping at a table in the corner. there are no seats, no stools, no booths. the idea is to have cafe, get in and get out. if you want to stay and linger over the ladies you have to order more cafe. and you have to stand.

she is so lovely and always treats me to cafe and one of these days i keep saying i will do something nice for her but my personal problems, lack of money, lack of sleep and general disregard for anyone elses feelings right now keep getting in the way.

we are discussing regret in our lesson right now and its almost too painful to bear. she's going through what sounds like a messy divorce and her daughter doesn't seem to be taking it too well.
and im here, going through whatever i am going through and i haven't told her about it. she keeps asking about my boyfriend in buenos aires and what he says and have i talked to him. and im too afraid of how nice shell be to me. of what shell do to make me feel better. i cant bare to see her face when i tell her, no, actually, its all over. and shell worry about me i know it. she will.

today she tells me she has premonitions in her dreams. that she saw her fathers death before he died, that she envisioned meeting me. that there was a man who would show up in her dreams and then one day she met him and he became her husband and in her dreams he ends up stabbing her in the stomach. she wonders out loud why she didn't see this before. why she didn't trust her instinct, why she didn't trust herself, why she trusted him.

this makes me start thinking. when did i give away all my power? all of my love to someone else and leave none for myself? how do we ever fully trust someone? people always let us down, i don't know why i was surprised this time. i don't know why or when i thought things felt different. why, every time you called me darling, i felt safe and so i gave it all away.

i ask her to have a premonition for me. to tell me my future. i want to know how this ends. to save myself from anything bad, to detour, to make changes so this goes the way that i want it to. because i THINK i know how i want it to end. but there really isn't anyway to know what the end looks like until you are there. and then it will just be the end.
she tells me i have to open my mind. that i have to will these thoughts, these questions into my dreams, to know my future is to dream it.

i want to cry at this. in her limited english she has just saved my life.