Something from Long Ago
Written maybe four years ago? Maybe
longer.
Of many
moments....
There are moments, when you are looking away and I am looking at the side of your face, in those moments, I get lost in the way your black hair disappears into the black of your shirt and how the pale of your skin stands off markedly from the neck of your sweater. There is a wisp of hair, several strands, not more than that, that curls forward, away from the rest, and its shadow makes a wave across your cheek in the blue and red of the beer light behind you and to my right. It moves like the ocean, left and right, as you spin in your chair, your smile broken only by your fingers as you bring your cigarette to your lips and inhale, usually quickly, lightly, barely taking in the smoke, but holding it, and then releasing. The ash, burning red hot, turns grey, the thin line of fire burning down, like a candle at both ends, to its inevitable end.
From your lips, my eyes move down to your chin, smoothly angling into your neck. The line of your skin stops there, halted by the high collar. If I follow that curve, my sight is stopped by your hair and I am forced to follow that line back to your eyes. Those eyes, mysteriously smiling, eyebrows lightly curving over them. It is hard to look into your eyes for several reasons. You watch the words on the screen off to my left, so I see you only in profile, but that is fine, like the porceline your eyes remind me of, because it allows me the opportunity to watch you smile, to watch your nose crinkle as your lips curl. Allof that is a goodness I can’t begin to describe without upsetting some balance between the real and the unreal, between the reality and the imagined, and that is a line I dare not cross with you.
I hope you’ll forgive me for staring, for writing down your features. I hope you’ll forgive my silence as I sit across from you, unable to speak, unable to make myself interesting. I am a writer, a non-social creature at heart, though I want, very much, to be able to talk to you, to mention more than the time or the weather. How can I excite you? Not with my written words- they are static- they sit here on my screen, here on this paper, and cannot do anything.
I watch you watch others, and I watch you turn to look at me watching you, and it is those rare moments when you smile toward me that I can feel , for just that moment, the connection between us that I want to extend but, for my silence, cannot. I am trapped in those same feelings that kept me silent through my years when I would find someone like you, someone I could spend long evenings with, looking, staring, composing, reading to you what I’ve written, what others have written about other women for whom they feel what I feel I feel.
There are moments, when you are looking away and I am looking at the side of your face, in those moments, I get lost in the way your black hair disappears into the black of your shirt and how the pale of your skin stands off markedly from the neck of your sweater. There is a wisp of hair, several strands, not more than that, that curls forward, away from the rest, and its shadow makes a wave across your cheek in the blue and red of the beer light behind you and to my right. It moves like the ocean, left and right, as you spin in your chair, your smile broken only by your fingers as you bring your cigarette to your lips and inhale, usually quickly, lightly, barely taking in the smoke, but holding it, and then releasing. The ash, burning red hot, turns grey, the thin line of fire burning down, like a candle at both ends, to its inevitable end.
From your lips, my eyes move down to your chin, smoothly angling into your neck. The line of your skin stops there, halted by the high collar. If I follow that curve, my sight is stopped by your hair and I am forced to follow that line back to your eyes. Those eyes, mysteriously smiling, eyebrows lightly curving over them. It is hard to look into your eyes for several reasons. You watch the words on the screen off to my left, so I see you only in profile, but that is fine, like the porceline your eyes remind me of, because it allows me the opportunity to watch you smile, to watch your nose crinkle as your lips curl. Allof that is a goodness I can’t begin to describe without upsetting some balance between the real and the unreal, between the reality and the imagined, and that is a line I dare not cross with you.
I hope you’ll forgive me for staring, for writing down your features. I hope you’ll forgive my silence as I sit across from you, unable to speak, unable to make myself interesting. I am a writer, a non-social creature at heart, though I want, very much, to be able to talk to you, to mention more than the time or the weather. How can I excite you? Not with my written words- they are static- they sit here on my screen, here on this paper, and cannot do anything.
I watch you watch others, and I watch you turn to look at me watching you, and it is those rare moments when you smile toward me that I can feel , for just that moment, the connection between us that I want to extend but, for my silence, cannot. I am trapped in those same feelings that kept me silent through my years when I would find someone like you, someone I could spend long evenings with, looking, staring, composing, reading to you what I’ve written, what others have written about other women for whom they feel what I feel I feel.
Posted: Sat - May 17, 2008 at 10:03 PM
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Published On: May 17, 2008 10:14 PM
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Published On: May 17, 2008 10:14 PM