Twenty.

His bearded grin stretched across his face, a shy gift he offered without hesitation. His eyes were silent stars, emerald-coloured hope with a little bit of brown to make them seem human. His face was a lighthouse that called out to my wayward soul-ship. “It is dangerous,” his light said, “to come too close to the jagged rocks that surround me.” But I was not afraid for myself, because it would mean that I could feel the pain of his unfathomable and unmovable base. But was it for his own safety? Was there fear that my maiden hulk could tear at the solid mass that housed his light?

So I took note of his beacon of warning. I sailed past, and his eyes were emerald-coloured stars.

Fourteen.

His whispered syllables multiplied into a colony of hungry ants, desperate for the honeyed drops that blossomed on my skin. His fingers wove into the untamed morsels of my locks as he took and I took back. My throat gave way to the songs of his gifts, and he answered my call. We moved together, the layered earth swaying back and forth with its power. And then we separated, becoming independent continents with unspoken words. He leaned over and placed his lips on my own, an ambassador exploring the inside of my mouth. 

He was a colony of ants, and I was the honeyed drops.

Nineteen.

Her scratchy voice reverberated with the soulful love of her spirit, sending small goosebumps down my darkened arms. The heartfelt hurt of forgetfulness seeped out of her throat to paint a picture on the canvas of the piano notes. The drums vibrated, a reminder of the ever present hope that punches out a steady beat. Then the saxophone’s reedy breath soared out, a fiery Phoenix amidst the beautiful pain.

Her scratchy voice sang with soul.

Eighteen.

Your easy smile for my easy laughter. Your handsome face for my hungry eyes. Your lovely mind for my skipping thoughts. Bottle-capped glasses for dragon-green eyes. Wrinkled noses for quiet teasing. My love for your heart. Your love for my soul. Me for you. You for me.

Seventeen.

There once was a girl named Apsothe

Who lived with George Clooney.

She wanted to go to Hawaii,

And he said,

“What? But I love Russia

With all my socks and buggers!”

Sixteen.

The mirror of the lake shown

Under the blazing of the Sun’s Heat.

It rippled,

The Waves dancing to the Shore,

Being held in the arms of Wind.

The Earth was being baked to a crisp,

Waiting to come out of the oven to cool.

The Blue Sky,

Tinged with the whitish fluff of clouds,

Simmered above us.

The world around us moved

In its quiet tranquility.

A bird’s throaty gurgle broke the silence.

Fifteen.

You called me BeautyFull, 

And you made me feel it.

My hair was ‘God sent’,

a step up from ‘God hate’.

My skin was sparkling and burning,

Loving and searing.

I was dark enough to be

Good Enough.

My lips were two plump scars

That you turned into 

A Hopeful Smile.

You.

You called me BeautyFull. 

And you made me feel it. 

Thirteen.

The white entrails danced forward

as I gasped the black tobacco down my throat.

The disgusting taste of harsh madness

was unnecessarily addictive. 

Why did my breasts ache for man’s distruction

when all it needed was God?

God.

The Educator.

And still I gasped for black tobacco.

Twelve.

My fingers pulsed, my heels and toes beating out a pattern on the sidewalk. My heart raced, my eyes moved. The wind shook the air out of the chambers of my soul, it hurt so cold. 

The door opened and clamored back towards his frame.

The tips of my ears burned with shame from being so bare. It did not matter. These books would turn them back to brown. 

Eleven.

She wanted to slap him for his arrogant forwardness, a horned bull excited with the sight of the red cloth of femininity. She wanted to claw at his face, pudgy with the luxury of ignorance. She wanted to look away from his bloated presence. When she ignored his texts (how did he get her number?), his friends confronted her. When he called, she shivered with dread, her stomach shaking with nauseating annoyance that he thought of her. She didn’t like the way he sat, almost laying down so that his slab of belly could relax. She didn’t like the way he spoke, the pretended masquerade of books and lives he did not know. She didn’t like his music, spitting rhymes of money, whores, and bullets spent for his pleasure. She didn’t like how he touched her, as if she only breathed for his hungry eyes. As if his fingers on her skin would melt the layers of material that hid what he wanted to hold. 

But she was polite. She was caring. She was smiling. She was hoping that he would look away so she could escape, blink so she could disappear, even for a second. But it could not be, because he was water that needed the moon to shake back and forth. He was the bear that needed to eat after hibernation. He was the fire that licked at the inescapable world. 

What was she? A woman who needed love, not dime-a-dozen compliments. She needed hope, not a drunken, greasy smile. She needed life, not the oily hair combed back from a browned forehead. What she needed was a tangible being worthy of her mind, and he was not it.

He was a horned bull excited for red cloth, and she tried to hide herself in its folds.

Ten.

How does one differentiate between loneliness and being alone? How does one explain that being in the company of the mind doesn’t equate loneliness, that it doesn’t ensure the deterioration of one’s soul, that it allows one to enjoy the silent thoughts that swim in your bloodstream?

Being alone doesn’t mean that you’re lonely. Being alone means that you prefer the singular existence in which you breathe and your heart beats irregularly to the drumming of the clock: one breath, two breath, threefourfive breath. Being alone means reading about yesterday so you can dream about tomorrow. It’s about praising God for your tired lungs and roaming fingers (thank GOD for those roaming fingers). 

Loneliness is blinking away the tears that bite the back of your eyelids. It’s the sadness that creeps into your limbs, the blackness choking the back of your throat. It’s the laughter that doesn’t want to come out, the smile that tries to hide. It’s not knowing if you’ll be in the same place next week, next month, next year, so you don’t make friends, just in case. It’s the bitter realization that people leave and don’t come back, like the air that escapes your tired lungs: one breath, two breath, threefourfive breath. Loneliness is the itch in the middle of your back that you can never reach, the coffee on the shelf too far from your fingers. 

Loneliness and being alone are not the same. They are synonyms of the heart, but they are not mutually exclusive. 

Nine.

His balding head shone under the lights, which illuminated the sparse, fly-away hairs that refused to unpluck themselves from his scalp. The darkened ring around the base of his skull reminded her of her grandfather, who loved to sit in his armchair with his wife beside him as the television screen in front of them flicked between different sports channels. His skin was chocolate milk, the sweet sight of it could make one smile in anticipation. It seemed to match his eyes, a murky green labrynth he shyly hid behind bottle-cap glasses. They were a rabbit hole in which she wanted to jump through, falling into another world. The moment she thought her feet would touch the floor, he would pull away from her gaze, and her gut bubbled with disappointment. His eyebrows, a darker shade of brown than his skin, seemed to reach for each other, not quite shaking hands above the bridge of his nose. His lips were thin, but still visible enough to make her wish she could feel them with her own. When they smiled, she smiled with them. How she wished she could kiss him, just to see if they were real.

His legs were long and thin. His arms were rubber hoses, his delicate hands and lanky fingers betrayed his profession. When he spoke, he flicked them every which way. When he listened so tentatively, they held his face, and they distracted her. She almost forgot what she was saying as she gazed on his physical self, and she often trailed off in the middle of her sentences. Focus; she shoke herself out of his eyes. Often times she had to look down at the lukewarm coffee sitting between her dark, scared hands just to remind herself of reality. 

Every once in a while, she would reach out to him, feeling his warm skin vibrantly living beneath her warped fingers. Regretfully, she pulled them back, remembering his soft words, I’m trying to not be as physical as I was, to ensure that I am doing what I must. Yes, she must retreat back into herself to help keep his promise. Sometimes, the heat rediating from him was too much for her, and she had to reach out to see if he was still human. 

When they parted ways, she reached out to him, just to graze her fingers against his. He brought his index and middle finger to his lips, lightly kissing them before pressing them timidly against the scar that curved beneath her left palm. Until Allah has dictated that we may meet again, he whispered. She looked into his opaque eyes and she smiled. 

Eight.

The dictionary definition of her personality served no purpose but to entwine her in the ropes of demarcated personality. It meant to water down the aged wine of her existence into a few cheap doctrinated idioms. How is it that this energetic sprite with dreams worth a thousand galaxies grew hard as crusted diamonds? How is it that her desires seemed to pool within her weakened palm and drip slowly into the soft dust of miscarriaged illusions? This beautiful creature who burned so bright with her energy that it carved painful scars upon her face. This same blistering mask that gazed erratically upon the withdrawn facade of her sister’s child. I do not understand you, she said with confused malice, to have such a disfigured opinion of the world around you. A look of contempt flashed bright on the child’s face. Experience has given me the eyes in which I must look upon the things I touch, he threw back, wishing it was his hand and not his voice in which he struck out. He was tired of the constant charade of love he did not feel for this bitter old woman. It irked him that his desire for peace and respect trumped his hatred for her dreadful presence. And what does your experience tell you? she spat, her scars hardening. That your world is this way only? You do not know the whole story in which you live. I have read your story, and I alone have the knowledge to decipher it. His mouth watered with acidic maliciousness as he contemplated his response. How does one beat back the hag of old age? What kept him from speaking truth instead of quilting lies in which he’ll make his rusted bed of pointed iron? How could he dream with the uncomfortable pricking of their thorns? I have nothing left to say, he whispered, handing her his resignation. Her lips danced with the thought of a smile, but it did not blossom into the flower, dampened by the rain of his short resistance. Your revolution was short lived, she taunted, folding her limbs across the front of her chest. Weakness befits you. He tensed silently and retreated into his hatred, pulling his quilt around him. This would be his comfort.

And his mouth watered.

Seven.

I missed you today. I missed our silent words, our comfortable banter. I missed your slender fingers pressing gently on your thin upper lip. I missed your lowered gaze, broken by the few moments you looked me in the face. I missed your hesitant smile, as if you were afraid I would reject it. Your smile was everything to me, how could I not fall in love with you? I missed you today. I missed your compliments, the way you called me ‘darling’. I missed the way you tried to keep our relationship pure, when all I wanted to do was devour you. I missed your texts, your willingness to come out of your shell. I missed that you didn’t feel the need to hide. 

I missed you. Today.

Six.

His eyes were the colour of shaded emeralds, soft with kindness and hope. Their playful lightness were microscopes under which her soul felt naked. She tried to hide, but her breathlessness moved the curtains that shielded her. She knew that this was not to be. He loved her beauty because he had love to give. But it was not for her to receive it, for she was not the kind of woman to love. His love was pure, without expectations. His love was for all of humanity, and it saddened her. She wanted his love, but it was not the kind she wanted. She wanted to touch and be touched, to live and live with. But she could not, would not, be that other with him.

His shaded emeralds were like microscopes.