Limerence at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art — By Alice Agro-Paulson

artwork by Lucy Jackson

The Great Hall is majestic, and it is packed with tourists. All of this white limestone is divine, and we are all here to be awed and seduced.

But today, I am on a mission. The barcode on my membership card has partially worn off, but I am layered in city grime, so I play dumb. I approach the boy stationed between the columns flanking the grand staircase. He looks through me with a smile, points his red laser at my card, and clicks… and clicks again… and clicks one more time, before he sighs when his gadget doesn’t beep. I’m too old to giggle my way in, but I know he is too young to compete with my mama-glare, and I am ready to hit him with the look when it happens.

This bear of a man in a security uniform appears beside me and rumbles, I got you, darling and he tells the stunned ticket-taker, she’s with me now.

His voice is like honey over my bones, and he offers me his arm, and my body decides we already know each other, and I slip a hand up into the crook of his elbow, and we are linked.

I squeeze the meat of this man’s arm, and he purrs, Alright then, let’s go, and we are off.

We move past the ticket-taker, into an archway, and beyond all common sense.

We are sheltered here from the din of the tourists, and I am relieved. But then I realize I haven’t even seen this man’s face yet, because my face barely comes up to his bicep, and I am somehow flush against his side.

So, I crane my neck to behold him, and I am bewitched.

I am transformed into a version of myself I thought vanished over a decade ago—before the virus occupied every cell, before I was occupied by other cells, before my occupation.

I suddenly want to apologize to that girl, but then, in a flash, I am reminded of the time I stood back-to-back with my best friend on a bustling Coney Island boardwalk, eyes closed, arms extended, with a handmade sign that read: free hugs!

Years later, I still remember the twins who hugged my legs, offered me a half-melted mouthful of cotton candy, and how happy I was to accept it.

I still remember the man who embraced us both and how he left a constellation of tears on my friend’s shoulder.

I still remember the elderly woman—bird-boned and spiced—who tickled my chin with her wiry curls.

But, now, I am tickled, and I am beaming up at this stranger, and he is grinning down at me, and I cling to this moment as we skirt from the archway to the hall until—

Until he bellows, She. Said. YES!

And I stop.

And everyone in the hall stops.

And everyone turns, and there is…applause.

And I should want to sink into the limestone, but I cannot stop smiling.

And I whisper up to him not to tell my husband, and he tosses me a wink and says to everyone, Isn't she beautiful!

And a woman passes us and says Yes, she is, you both are, lucky you!

And before insecurity can tacky me to the floor, my betrothed twirls me in a tight circle at his side, and then we are promenading down the North Gallery, past the Byzantine pottery, past a line of carved marble busts… and I forget my rain-soaked jeans, my arthritic knees, the weight of this world. I submit to this pure moment of joy.

Our laughter has torn eyes away from the gleaming sculptures and relics behind glass, and what is happening is a collective tendering—smile to smile/ synapse to synapse / memory to memory.

I want to bask here, but I need this moment to end before it’s ruined, before the enchantment is broken.

So, I whisper up to him that this is my stop, and we pause as we reach Medieval.

We uncouple and face each other.

We lock eyes, and he says, I appreciate your sense of humor, but what I hear is: I appreciate you.

And he bows to me, and I clasp both hands over my chest in response.

We part ways.

And then, it is over.

But it’s not really over because I still feel like that before-girl.

And I think of my daughter, how she sprinkles kindness wherever she goes; how she always manages to leave souls a little better than how she found them. How, once, I tried to do that, too.

Alice Agro-Paulson is a Brooklyn-based developmental editor, poet, and grief tender. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Voicemail Poems, Eunoia Review, S2F, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Alice has been supported by RWW and Tin House while working on her hybrid speculative memoir. She has been nominated for Best of the Net.