You slipped in quietly, in the middle of a no-name day. Sat in the corner, humming a beck and call held closely in your mouth, a tune I follow through the corner of my eye. Your uncertainty is curious but unfocused. I step closer, give you permission to let me down with your proposal; a broken record of offering a rundown tenement of your body - I’ve heard this pitch before.
I am offered kingdoms for a pledge of my submission on a regular basis.
We briefly tease out the game, circle around intrigue. Too quickly, we retreat back to our corners of the earth and go on as if nothing passed our lips. I watch from a distance, unsettled. Something inside me keeps bubbling thoughts I push away. Through all the ordinary things I don’t want to say, lies a muse fiddling with the matchbook, using her head to scratch the surface I wish to burn. I bite my tongue and refuse to form a god out of my curiosity of you.
You're the first altar I don't want to adorn.
On paper, there is no way we would blend. If we were total strangers, we would probably pass each other. Adonis does not carry on with Eve until after she takes a bite of the apple to prove her sin. I won't deny the urge to trail kisses from your Adam’s apple down to your snakehead, but I’ve performed this act of carnality before. I don’t want to apologize for a fleeting moment and have it mistaken for love.
Especially, when I want to know...
I can’t explain the urge to know more than a glance. From afar, I see you in angles I am curious about. What's your history? Your passion to move in the world? What makes your eyes crinkle in laughter? Your heart drop in fear? What are your favorite stories? How many times have you fallen in love? Who makes up your family? What's your favorite meal? Your favorite secret? Guilty pleasures? What...
makes me care so much?
I could have you in ungodly ways, knee-to-lip benediction, a worship that would blow our minds for a night. I could burn in a love that would never ignite a flame, leaving a wreckage of wanton regret. Yet all I want is your vibe, to see your humanity, to complete a history I wanted to know when my moon was still rising.
I know you are probably not interested in giving away more than a boyhood curiosity. Lackluster encounters should dampen the compulsion to chit chat myself into a deeper connection. You're a classic lesson in "people make an effort for those they want to spend time with." One word answers to curve the intentions you don't think of asking about.
I don’t want you in the form of love poems and romantic comedies. I don’t want you as a smutty magazine or meet-ups in the Red Light District. I'm attracted to the pull of watching you from a distance to the stories I conjure in my mind about the kindness I see in your eyes. You’ve triggered a je ne sais quoi kind of something.
I'm not brave enough to ask if we can vibe and I know you wouldn't have an interest. I care too much for the average person, an awkward mess of fumbling “how do you do” with apologies for taking up your time. I’m at the age where I don’t know how to ask if we can be friends without going through a round of attempted romance. I have to get over this: the overthinking, the oversharing, the over you.
I put this letter into the universe as my final word. I take the hint to bury the need. Personally, I hope this never finds you, that the universe will make it so that you are too busy to notice the foolishness marked down for prosperity. Pardon the need to poem you, that’s just who I am. Pardon my heart, it’s just too big along with the body that shadows what you could have seen in me. Ignore me as other timelines do. By the time you find this, my eyes will have learned to skip over you and even if that’s not the case, let’s pretend they have.
Sincerely,
The woman who is learning to turn down her gods