The streets outside my window are deep black,
Slick with silver rain,
Illuminated completely, every so often, by a sudden violent flash.
And I think in flashes like that
At this late hour.
I think in strobes
Of your face.
I don't know why I wonder what you're doing.
I don't know why I wonder
How your skin would look
Lit by a sheen of rainwater
In those flares of white lightning.
What shadows would deepen your collarbones
And how your eyes would look,
Half lit with their part mischievous, part vulnerable glint.
I don't know why I keep stumbling into the thought of you
As I travel my mind in the dead of night.
I wonder if her lips are soft.
And I shake myself,
Think it would surely be wrong to find out.
You and I are so oddly close
So suddenly
And I could lose that.
And here there is not much else I have
To lose.
And yet
I think in flashes tonight.
A glimpse of skin in my mind,
Skin and words and rain ssssliding down the windowpane.
A burst of feeling that I blush my way out of
In the dark
And try to turn platonic.
In these past days, I've tried to bend my heart's gaze away
But I keep stealing little glances,
Truth be told.
I am curious. I am fascinated. I am drawn.
And it is late, and I am uncertain,
And outside the rain comes down with wanton savagery,
Total abandon,
And something in me leaps at the sound
And calls for me to answer it.
Something inside me surges like lightning,
A white hot bolt singing through my bones
Making them ache sweetly,
And I want to come down, as well.
With total abandon.
Just fall.
I try to shut it off,
But only casually, only halfheartedly.
In the deepest part of me,
I rejoice that I barely know you,
For there is so much to discover, so much to see.
In the private room of my mind,
I am shamelessly captivated.
Who are you?
What are you?
I want to know. I want to know everything.
I want to read your soul.
Rain your words down on me like a sudden storm,
I want them all.
I want them worked into my skin, slow.
What am I saying? Who are you?
Who knows:
Who are you
So immense
So enigmatic
That I must think of you only in parts,
In little glimpses?
That I fear the way I
Must
Think of you?
Who are you
That I am stirred and uneasy
That my thoughts arc toward you as if pulled by gravity?
Who are you
That I am so caught
And so unprepared?
You see...
I so rarely meet anybody
I want to feel with.

She wasn’t there, in her cubicle, when I arrived.

It was empty, that part of the faculty area apart from the tables, the afternoon light passing through the window and the ravines dividing the place.** Her spot was full of dust, past dated old calendars and dreams of its former occupant who was eaten by the ocean and drowned. Well, at least the rumor claimed.

I don’t know if it’s true, but everyone knows what the former occupant did last summer. It was about two weeks before her wedding when she ran away with her student. Both of them just disappeared from the circulation one day. During the early part of their absence, the staff and classmates assumed that the reason might have been just trivial, like a mere cough or a fever.

But time and weeks dragged on and both of them were gone. Nowhere to be found. No words were left. No notice either. Nothing. They simply disappeared, just like that. Like one day, they have decided not to exist in this conventional world anymore. Like a bubble ceasing to float.

They stayed in an island, it was said. Packed their bags with clothes, flash lights, canned goods – everything they could carry at a dead run. Then they hired a boat which carried them to their destination, but no one found out the existence of the boat. There was no trace. Not even a slight.

The island was remote, detached and unoccupied. People say they built a settlement somewhere in the area, made of woods, twigs, leaves and perhaps, love. But some says they have their tent, and it was where they dreamed their elusive dreams.

But a storm broke in the dead hour of the night, shaking their sleep. All the trees and vegetation swayed to and fro, trying to catch the unfamiliar song of the wind while avoiding the occasional bouts of the lightings.

It must have been beautiful, the entire universe in sheer panic, in the middle of the night, embracing you home.

Before they knew it the tide rose and the world quivered and the waves grew massive and rolled and crashed in that part of the island and that edge.

She wasn’t there, in her cubicle, when I arrived.

Nor did the island in its former spot. It was vacated, that part of the faculty area apart from the afternoon light passing through the window which overlooks the contour of the overlapping mountains.

I placed my bag on the table, took a pen and scribbled a note saying that I’d be back some other time. She must have been in her class but I cannot be sure.

I cannot see the ocean from here.