I walk into this room every night, tonight of all nights. Something seems different. Like the silent sigh paused on everyone’s lips, I prompt myself to feel something other than what I feel now.
A natural reaction: standing in the middle of circular stone patterns, tips of shoes touching, black leather against blue rubber, arms outstretched but together, tips of fingers beacons pointing North or South, East or West.
It all depends on the angle. But from above, you’re just a line in the middle of circles.
And so this night, nothing is different because I still feel different. I’m transported, away, and so far in between. That nagging feeling still burns in my head, and my eyes are shifting, aching, and raw.
I do as I always do. I stare into my eyes as the world fades and turns black, first its edges, then eventually the black swallows everything up.
The first night, I held his hand, and it was as natural as tears falling from the sky. Hands always fit.
Something sacred: sharing cigarettes. The floor is cool and so is the beer I sip. The smoke that rises from my cigarette spells a word which is unreadable. You know you can’t read cigarette smoke words from where you are. You’d have to be above, or below.
I blink. I’m not in my room: I’m in a minibus at ten in the morning, heady from excitement and lack of sleep, clutching tightly to a hand. The owner of this hand leans his head on my shoulder. He sleeps, shakes, yawns and closes his eyes again. He is tired, I am euphoric. I stare out at the landscape unfolding before me: orange mountains, blue skies, gray smog. I try to write in this yellow notebook, but the bus shakes and disturbs me from doing so. Instead, my lips search for his, and he responds sleepily, all the sweeter. I take pity. “Sleep,” I whisper, and he takes my hand and obliges.
But meetings; let me talk about meetings.
He’s on time, he’s there, I note with relief as I run to cover the distance. And indeed there he is, leaning against the yellow subway walls, drinking a cold, overpriced cola, waiting. His hair is still slightly wet.
“Swimming was great; he was always the faster swimmer, though,” he reports with an offhanded shrug, kissing me briefly before taking my packages with one hand and my other hand in his. He gives me a sideways hug as we walk to the escalators. “But you’re quite early! I expected you to be an hour late,” he teases.
We agreed earlier to meet at 8pm. And we did meet. Oh, it’s so easy to meet when you’re both within arms’ reach. But when oceans and mountains and deserts place themselves between two people, every meeting becomes an exceptional event. Ticking days off a calendar, your cries for the days to hurry become echoes bouncing off tremendously high mountain walls, and you hope the other catches just a note of this echo before it disappears completely and sinks to the earth. Under the ground, where unheard wishes weep.
And so in my room, I stand staring at the horizontal lines the lamp posts grace my floor with. So smooth and so yellow. A yellow horizontal embrace.
