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v u l v a l i c i o u s I can still see her standing in that white shirt, looking just like the boys from my grade school Get out of here. You�re wearing that shirt and a smile; you�re doing all the things you do that make me feel stupid. She sits across from me and makes a joke. I laugh at her, at her expression, at the thing she said. I am thinking in the bottom corner of my mind of all the things I am not doing but should be while the rest of my brain processes thoughts of her like Lucy�s candy factory, one at a time spilling over until I am overwhelmed. She absent-mindedly buttons up the small, white shirt and I am taken in. It is ridiculous to ask myself whether or not I�m staring�I am, there is no getting around it. I try to look away, but my eyes are fixed on her figure, small and illuminated by the glow of the over-bright light. I realize daily how impossible anything more between us is, with every conversation and glance. At the same time, I crave more and more until I feel like a begging dog or child, whining at the doorway, asking to be let in, asking for the sweet things I cannot get. I�d pay her more than a penny for her thoughts. For passage into the places in her mind, I�d give her heaps and stacks of quarters, ten-dollar bills folded stripper tip style and stuffed into her pockets (in lieu of a g-string). I would give anything to know what she�s thinking right now, to know what she thinks of when she�s almost asleep, to know what she�d think if I kissed her. I can answer my own questions sometimes with answers I do not want to hear, and that last is one of them. A quiet refusal, an irreparable tear, the white shirt she is wearing cast aside in the hopes that I will be dissuaded. Some things are just too simple to want to believe. |