Feeling: puzzled
Listening to: Cranberries, "Empty"
Reading/Watching: Maya Angelou. "Now long ago."

Darling one.

Nights like this, my hands fall useless in my lap, and my words are banal. If I could just sing you here. Like sirens with shipmates.

You are a violinist, and you are studying at Julliard now, smiling to yourself, perhaps dating some careless blonde who loves how you hold your bow. But she will not talk to you about stars, about winter wind or the feeling of a cold ring warming on your finger. You cuddle your instrument to your cheek, you stroke across the strings and materialize the possibility of me, dancing along the shining wood. You do not know I exist, but you pray. You are already playing my melody, and waiting.

Or maybe you are an awkward no-longer-teenager who bends his back over textbooks. You are a short-tempered poet, with large hands, and you can't explain why your eyes always close when you hear my favorite song. You don't think I exist. You think you are meant for the girl you've been following with your eyes, the frighteningly beautiful one. You write imaginary conversations with her, write her into your arms, as I write myself into yours. You crumple up page after page of verse, each time wondering why you can't rhyme anything with "blue eyes" and why, instead, you keep thinking of brown.

You are a shy math teacher who has just begun his career. Your students laugh at your jokes, but the boys think you are a geek, and the girls whisper about if you're cute. Your apartment is small, and cold, and you sleep at night with your arms wrapped around air. You dream of a woman who will sing into the hollow of your throat, her hands at your waist, yours tangled in her hair.

And I am here. Perhaps you exist, locked inside someone I already know, and one day you will escape the chrysalis of our friendship and wonder how long I have been waiting. Perhaps you are worlds away, looking for me and always falling short, because you haven't considered that I might be here instead. But however long it takes, this string that runs from your ribs to mine will hold fast, and someday we will wind around enough years, like a maypole, and come cheek to cheek, eyes wide, and breathless. And I will be yours. And we both will stop waiting.

Tonight, and many nights this past week and more, I have heard my voice, saying:

"If I kissed you right now, what would you do?"
And you:"Why don't you find out?"

It's eerie. I can't stop thinking about it.

For all her courage-
The climb down the ivory tower,
The Minotaur and the witch
The forest of vicious thorns,
She stands, noble and fair:
Cowering
at sight of the Prince.

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