''I remember you so fondly'", said the Queen

In the theater foyer I met the Queen – like I do every year, when in the autumn time beautiful women marked by the dark stigma of literature gather up to watch the festival plays. men do, too.
she showed herself the same as I remembered her: petite and subdued, in her tiny court shoes, with her eyes focused – that's why I always saw resemblance between her and Szymborska: on the one hand, cynical bitterness of a badly intelligent person who might have had experienced a lot, on the other, this stubborn, irremovable element of girlishness, the sparkle, the cheerful contrariness, which work so refreshing cause they won't let her get used to the world in its bizarre form.
on the first day, only a greeting – she was just dialling her daughter's number.
on the second day, I sat on a hassock next to her. She gave me her characteristic close look; no matter what is the distance between you and her, you get a feeling that for a moment her mind is being to you, she's sitting and thinking to you, but not like the professor in Ferdydurke did, although this is precisely the context we share, no, she's becoming for someone and to someone in a most friendly and endearing way. she asked me an awful lot of questions, to which I responded with that verbal diarrhea of mine; thousands of words and none of them was what I wanted it to be. you look so good, she said, and then she ran away, pretending she had to. and I wasn't sure any more, whether I was really the only one, for whom this accidental meeting was so special, so damn special that it was almost unbearable.
or maybe I was the only one, indeed. one's opinion of themselves shall not be too high.
having left the theater, I felt like crying. that woman, that beautiful one, that distant one, about whose death I dreamt just a few nights before. see you next year in the theater. you, the belle.