It never used to be like this. I could sit for hours between the music and the bar, mixing my alcohol with cigarette smoke and nobody would notice me. If it wasn’t for the occasional question of a passing bartender, I’d have figured I was invisible. Now it’s different.
Now I feel like I’m really here, I’m solid, and I’m being noticed.
I glance at her, sitting alone with a notebook at the other end of the bar. I know she can see me, I can almost hear her thoughts. I can almost taste her heartbeat. I can feel her thinking about me, and I want to feel more.
When did this happen?
I hide a smile as I hear her catch a breath between smoke and exhale. There is a quiet glance caught in glass and then gone. I ask the bartender for another drink, and it seems as if my voice fills her drink until she spills, and she quickly looks away. It makes me feel hungry, this distance, this closeness, and I realize that I haven’t eaten in what feels like weeks.
There’s a soft blur on my memory, and I can’t remember where I was last night.
What happened?
I sketch her profile in my mind, reflected in the mirror, behind rows of bottles and slightly across from me. It’s a snapshot moment like a sip of red wine. She is alcoholic cute in shot glass style. The squint of an eye as I light a cigarette and the hint of a smile, a little sway. She’s moving as if the music was between us instead of nothing at all, but sometimes I can’t tell the difference between rhythm and alcohol.
She sits so close; her reflection is further than my arms can reach. I know I can get her closer, I know I can make her do anything.
How do I know this?
What happened? How can I be feeling these things?
Where was I last night?
I try to think, she distracts me. It’s not love, it’s not even lust.
It’s hunger.
I try to look away and I’m captured. I focus on what’s in front of me; my reflection. That can’t be right. I don’t look like that…
Do I?
I stare at myself, and I hear my own thoughts, remembering. I try to talk and end up alone. I am here, with broken hands. I can hold nothing. I shouldn’t be able to hear her heart beat; I shouldn’t be able to feel her thoughts. I want to be too close to her, and it frightens me, because I know that if I get that close, we’re both going to be lost.
I can’t help it though. I can just look at her, turn my head, slide a smile down the bar like an offering, and she takes it. She stands, moves closer, moves towards me, and I know that I can keep this going until it’s too late.
I need to eat.
I remember.
I didn’t want this, but I can’t go back now.
It was last night, it was someone else. It was another bar, and instead of me watching her there was someone else watching me. The woman in the shadows, and she called me without words. She smiled, and her teeth stayed with me until I fell asleep, until I woke, and it was another night.
She moved right through me.
I wanted her, then, like someone else want me, now. Like the minutes that slipped away, right through me. Like her smile that let me know that she could see me. I felt that even with my arms outstretched I couldn’t touch, reach, or hold her. It was like another love poem to be torn up and thrown away. It was nothing but distance.
Until I was too close to get away.
Now it’s my turn. She killed me.
I remember.
I don’t want this.
I can’t do this; I can’t do to someone else what has been done to me.
I let her go, she passes too close to me, and I become a shadow of who I could be. These broken hands shake. My eyes close, my heart pulls and aches, and I can feel the air she moves but I don’t want to move her closer to me. So I sit in silence, and I’ve never felt quite this far away.
I stare through the alcohol, the cigarette smoke, for the longest second. I’m still hungry, and I follow her out into the night.
