Night

It’s a warm sticky night in early summer. The heat rushes out from under the quilt every time it flutters, untangled from the sticky mess of limbs underneath. My thoughts don’t let me rest. Feelings of inadequecy and doubt clog any rationality I have. The saxophone parps in brassy crests from the speakers. Words spill from them as well, singing of the most terrible afflictions of mankind: Lust and love and the awful effects it has. I long to hold and to roll with you, stranger. The night is thick and I feel like I want to be outside, dreaming of the muggy wetness of the air drying the sweat from my body. I dream of getting sweaty with you. Somewhere out there, you are. My thoughts fluctuate between the distant troubles that occupy every space in my mind, and the immediate unruly night that is wreaking my body. Thoughts never let me be. Belief in a cosmic destiny is the only reprise I have, leading me with hope that, although my life has been about you this past six months, this is not the end. I will see you again, and meet you, and be with you.



A week later, and it’s the end of term.



Test time. And I see you, and you see me. I can’t rest, knowing your behind me. Looking at me all the time. I long to turn around, and glance and stare. I just want to be with you. But the test. I struggle through the hours, my mind a broken tree, between you and the need to do well. I long for our eyes to met in the furitive glances I cast your way. And then, you leave. I finish up and walk past, desperate to meet your eyes but too shy to do anything but shuffle my feet as a I go. Outside, I parade in a loop around the building, hoping and wishing to see you out the front. And there you are, eyes finally meeting in a distant gaze. The lights go green and I walk across to meet you. In the final moments, a painful smiling grimace crosses your face, like a ghost of our final meeting. Behind me, a voice says hello to you, and my heart sinks. I traipse into the courtyard. As sad sight to see to the birds in the sky, as lonely and sad and bereft of happyness as a man could be in such sunshine.