ir
twenty feet awayYou were maybe a foot away from me, sitting to the side, accomplishing your task with silent efficiency. A chord rung out, emanating from your body; it drew me near. I stopped to watch, stopped to see, a man of beauty, a man of strength. No cries of anguish or pain, no cries of fear of structure or fear of imminent danger. Hope lifted in my heart; you had a different vibe than all the other guys. You could make me happy. You could keep me safe. You would laugh at my jokes and guard my wounded self-esteem. / And then four feet away, not that much later. We met for the first time, for real. A sudden recognition, an exchanging of names, a few witty (or ditzy?) comments. Four feet again, near the forbidden. Our eyes didn't meet, for you were distracted, lost in your own world of music blasting from your headphones. I traced the line defining your back with a marker that writes on air. / Seasons slipped by. You stood just six feet away in your savvy black bowtie. Fake, yes, but still considered formal. A cheap imitation at the very least, but to one of us, it's all the same. Closer yet, a foot again, only a seat away. I drew my fingers across the top of your surprisingly smooth hands, tracing your veins, the veins that carried your blood, faintly pulsing, speaking softly of gentle carresses and sweet nothings.
The Chronicles of a StarA relationship is born when two strangers sit together at a table for the first time. What’s he thinking? Awkward small talk fills the air until gravity pulls them closer, and like a ball of hydrogen in space, everything begins to fuse. / H becomes He. A single AIM convo becomes a series of texts exchanged despite freezing fingers. A string of unrelated conversations becomes 81 Post-its on a clean white wall. Somehow, across the span of a month, the heat increases, and as the couple warms up, their feelings expand, swelling to fill the space of a boisterous red giant. / When the initial passion dissipates, fusion begins again. They swap secrets over rainbow-filled flash games, and helium reacts to form carbon. Everything besides the core doesn’t matter - it’s all blown away, leaving a miniscule white dwarf, what two people feel for one another, aglow with the words that no longer need to be spoken.