It was the most excruciatingly full minute I’ve ever known. The smoke undulated; the red-lit room slowed enough to be a tangible medium. It was a chamber of slow, electric guitar. It was a room of cigarettes, whisky, and people who search and are left wanting. But your eyes are what made my world thicken. As soon as your gaze latched to mine my breath was lost, taken by the flurry of my mind.
I realize now that I didn’t see you; caught in my gaze was every path you held for me. I saw me taking you to bed, the tips of your fingers touching my chin, the flashes of skin and desperation. I anticipated every breathless moment of discovering your intricacies and wondering at them. Your gaze, mine for that instant, was replicated in my mind a thousand times over in a thousand different lights. I knew with the surest conviction that the moment when you were about to smile would make something rise in me. You’d show me perfection, enough to make me itch, enough to make me hunger to hold you closer than your skin could allow.
Even before I knew the happiness you gave me, I felt the sting of losing it. It would be so good that I felt sick and I detested you for the empty space you would leave. I read, in your eyes, every joy I would be able to find in them. I clenched every muscle in my body just to keep them from slipping off my bones. It was deliciously melancholic, revelling in the idea of you. But I was already destroyed by our murdered ideals, fated to be left broken on the floor.
I shattered our locked gaze, breaking from your fiction to scan the room of other lost eyes. You’re magic my dear, or so I imagine, and I’m a coward that you’ll never know. Leave me with my eyes still searching, a hungry soul, but one that is saved from your wonder ripping it to pieces.
Lydia Anderson is a Communications student at Concordia University. Lydia grew up in Vancouver, BC and attended Capilano University before she transferred to Quebec. Her biggest passions include film, photography, jogging, literature, and travel. She hopes to work as a video marketer, creative content producer, or event coordinator in her career. You can find Lydia on Twitter @LydiaAndersonn or Instagram @lydiaanderson.
