in a little while

curiosity, the passionate hand of desire
-frank o'hara, sleeping on the wing


his face is a sad struggle. i am tempted many times to seek out answers to that one question i want to have answered, but there are no roads leading up to his house anymore. i see him sometimes, a stranger who works halfway around town, beating deadlines at the strike of midnight, reading tomorrow's news, a daysleeper with sad eyes and sun-deprived lips.

i remember the first time i ever saw him. on the porch, at the old college. i thought he was younger than i. he kept his head down. he sat there quiet, as if unminding the world around him.

and years later when i would see him, he was as thin as ever. the eyes were just as sad, the lips were even paler. the eyelids flutter open like a wing and the iceberg hits like a thunder. the melancholy of an afternoon in contrast to a woman's cracking voice deploring an insurmountable evil.

there is a room in a tower in a street in a city in a place i had not seen before. there is a lavender bottle of lilac and sunflower, a strip of masking tape with fluffy hearts inked with a marker, bearing its owner's name. the contents are long gone.

time had washed away the scent, i came by upon the bottle a few weeks too late. and the only reward was the thought of its scent insisting against his skin. i smiled, took a look in the bathroom mirror and made my way back to a waiting glass of cachaca.

i had been dead wrong all this time. it was his name, his face, his smile, his skin, his thoughts, his presence that was in my mind all along. but i didn't realize it the last time i saw him, and so said nothing.

now, what i wouldn't give just to see him again, and ask: 'are you seeing anyone?'