You look like a child when you push your lips out like that, not quite pursed, just out, like paddles. Your face is a river, a gentle, mysterious river, eyes closed. Look at me! Notice me...You're in your own world, not exactly sad, just turned inward. Dark hair, a strange haircut, like maybe you were a Hare Krishna up until recently, the front part has grown out a bit but the back still stands out. Or maybe you just like the unkempt look. You've certainly got that down! And I like it too.
Why I'm drawn to you I don't know. You are young, perhaps you are a child. You could even be my child. That would be awful, such a beautiful thing as my child. The pain of loving such beauty, of having to stop short.
You don't open your eyes, you massage them with your fingertips, push your knuckles into your eye sockets, rub on the part of your skull that protrudes, where your eyebrows grow. Your forehead is a wide expanse, an open-ended question. I want to ask you, I want to ask, I want to, I want...
You stretch against the wall and I dance close to you, not so close as to be a bother, just so I can observe you closer, take notes, draw a picture in my mind, charcoal on newsprint, dirty fingers, marks on your hips where I pull you close and plant a kiss on your pouty lips. But I'm afraid. You might reject me, and then I would have nothing to look at, nothing to ponder, nothing to write about.
Your clothes are outdated, dirty, your shirt with its little flaps on the shoulders buttoned at the bottom of the neck, the bottom hem cut out. You stretch up and the shortened shirt reveals your belly button -- peekaboo! -- and a finger-width of hair narrowing, arrowing down into your waistband. Slacks, dress pants that have been cut off short, short-short, maybe too short. When you sit down you have to arrange the short legs to make sure your stuff doesn't show. But I've already seen it, in my mind. In the charcoal drawing you aren't wearing the shorts. When you stretch upward, arms high in the air, again and again, I can make out the shape, the texture even, beneath the silly plaid pattern. Your stretching is erotic, repetitive. I'm coming in for the kill, the catch, whatever you want to call it.
A small tattoo on each arm, one at the wrist, the other at the elbow. Are there others I need to know about to make my drawing complete? Accurate? You sit, adjust, bend forward. Your spine protrudes close to your hip bones. Skin and bones all marked up with fingerprints. Detectives would be able to find me so easily; I'm the one with smudged fingers, you're the one with marks, smeared, spread over your thin, delicate flesh.
I move around the dance floor and keep close enough to see you, to enjoy you. You pout and I wonder what's wrong, wonder if you would respond to a touch, respond to me.
You're sitting away from me and I sit catacorner and stare at you as you meditate, legs crossed, half lotus. Still pouting. A song comes on and I see a smile. Everybody sings along: O, Suzanna, oh, don't you cry for me. I've come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee. You too, me too. We're singing together. If you would but open your eyes you would see me, I would smile, we could take it from there.
I decide that I don't need a lover who's all pouty. It's nice to look at but how heavy is that? You're thin and light bodied but your soul and heart are dark and heavy. That's what I decide. And then our friend introduces us quite by chance and you confess that you have a hangover and I want to hug you.
I put a hand on your leg as I say goodbye and then when we see each other again outside, you touch me and I'm back to square one. Your smile melts me and I'm glad I didn't see it earlier because I might have disappeared.
