HIM

It has been about two months since I last saw you. In all honesty, I had started to forget what you looked like. A few weeks ago I spent almost an entire day finding quiet silences strewn across the hours to try and piece your face together from sheer memory. Funny, right? How this could matter enough, demanding my unperturbed attention. The sound of your voice was clearer. Faint, but still identifiable I suppose. I thought they said light travelled faster than sound, but I guess what's in a face if someone's words manage to dent you. So last week when you shared a photograph on text, I was relieved. Not giddy or indifferent or excited. I wasn't brimming with joy. I almost immediately got serious, like I had been bestowed a rare chance to remember, register and reflect.

An opaque transparency - that is what I'd said your face carried. And that shone through your words too. Not that I got a modus operandi when it comes to any of this but if one's intrigued me enough, even momentarily, my system responds with pen on paper.

Right. Your face.

Standardly (and yes, that's a word) amusing, how we are quick to define the complexity and unfamiliarity of another's face as sheer beauty; almost regularly failing to do so with our own selves. Maybe that is why we need this - to have our hearts flutter and marvel in the unexplored beauty of another - hoping that will somehow push us to do that for ourselves too.

Sorry, back to your face.

How I was deeply torn between holding it in my palms but also showing it around - like remaining proof of my ability to 'still' be able to respond to another human in this capacity. In all genuineness and bathed in true human embarrassment, I'd like to sit next to you as I read your face, dig for subtext, wishing I spot something hidden - like you'd been waiting who would even work out there was a challenge to beat here to begin with. I wonder if we run to establish mingling meanings to people so that we'd have something abstract but concrete to point to later, if we were to fail to understand them or make room for them in our lives. Or maybe it is because what if someone was simple/easy to decipher at first go but it was actually us who lacked ability to tolerate, accept or welcome them.

Either way, that bridge you find yourself standing across from when someone new crosses paths with you is an exciting and exhilarating one; at least it is for me. At least it feels like that right now.

Shit - your face - my confession, genuine and embarrassing - let's circle back to that.

So as much as I'd like to do that (read above), I am also deeply tempted to become your muse, in whatever capacity that is currently possible. Unprompted, tell me what shook you about me, took you by surprise, tempted you or interested you. Such a self-indulgent but naively dangerous pursuit - to open yourself up for adoration and praise (hopefully) like that. Gosh, I must be the bravest person alive right now.

There could be, must be, people like your friends you've previously mentioned, who would think this is too much. Maybe you do too? Maybe this is excessive or unnecessary or ill-timed or poorly targeted. Maybe. But alas, for someone who writes, eons of prose and poetry lay hidden in maybes. If you were to ask me the why or what or how of this, that's the only explanation I would have to offer. And then maybe none of this is about you. It is about me, my pen and my art. And you simply here are a specimen, a triggering element that was meant to merely unearth this string of sentences from me - meaning nothing and everything all at once.

Would it be fair, sensible, meaningful, to have you read this when you're far away and nothing has transpired between us but some conversations.

'some conversations'. What lies. That isn't 'some'; that isn't nothing.

You should know I don't turn to writing after speaking with any passing stranger. But does that reflect poorly on my skills or brightly on who you are (or seem to be)? I don't know.