I’ve been quite preoccupied with thoughts of love and intimacy recently. I blame Spring time.
‘Love’ might be overstating it. What’s the word? Affection? A tenderness? The stirring ardor of a wild heart? Dickinthebraintitis?
Remember when you met that person for the first time? It might have been a chance encounter in the aisles of the condiment section at your local super market lined with, or across another on rain-stained streets, beneath the halo of traffic lights.
And baked in the smell of the sea food section and piss and vomit.
They are blended into the crowd, but there is something alluring about them – the bearing in their pose or the cadence of their voice – that overwhelms you, and in that moment, the crowd fades into anonymity and you are transfixed. In that moment, you begin to truly notice them – the way their frazzled hair gets the way of their faces, the way the nervously rub the knuckle of their index finger, the way their rock back and forth on the ball of their feet, swaying with music from their headphones.
The impulse builds. You must know. you make your way towards them. Cutting through lines, blocking traffic, knocking over piles of discounted wholesale snack. The silhouette becomes clear, so does the blemish. Disappointment, and shame at your own shallowness wash over you.
Then the moment passes and the world resumes, but the mirage of what it could be lingers on your mind.
Or perhaps that was an excuse? Terror at the prospect of their rejection, or worse – fear of disappointment, griped you tight, yanked you away and gave you emotional whiplash?
It is easier to be sheltered and shielded. Peel apart our armor and you will find our calloused hearts. We have learned, through a life time of bad memories, to close ourselves. We have learned to recognize how deluded our lonely minds can be, so we take out a scalpel to butcher the even the most tender and evanescent emotions, a blush, a fleeting crush.
#00117F 