Are You Alone?

I could feel the woman staring at me and I turned towards her smiling. She was older than I had first thought, though it is hard to tell everyone has thick, deeply creased skin. She smiled at the children who were riding my bicycle back and forth on the trail, and then looked back at me. Mongolian women's eyes were even harder to look at than the men, because in addition to being stripped of all pretenses as if they never learned to hide like we had, and cored to their essence which was pure and intense, I had this suspicion they saw even more than the men. I knew by the way that the woman was looking at me, then, she was trying to understand me. She grabbed my hand. Her skin was dry and warm. Then she looked at me, smiled and tilted her head in a curious manner. She pointed at me, then raised one hand and one finger in the air, pantomiming the question almost everyone I had encountered on my trip seemed to ask. Oddly, the frequency of the question was amusing when it could be answered in silence. I looked past the woman, to the children who were cruising on my bicycle, attempting to do what looked like some kind of group pop a wheely, to the huge candlelit blue sky arcing above us. Yes, I laughed, feeling the peace spreading inside me. I'm alone