THE EYE AND THE BEHOLDER

I remember lying in a queen bed and staring into the double-mirrors on the opposite wall. No matter where I looked, I was in my frame of vision: the me in the mirror was already looking there. Endless repetitions replaced true sight and before I knew it I was watching myself watch myself. I wasn't even looking into the mirror, anymore; I was thinking of myself looking at myself. Somewhere around 3:00, I turned out the light. Somewhere around 5:00, I lost consciousness. Somewhere around 7:00, she woke up and left for work without saying goodbye.

Let's try a metaphor

Let's try a metaphor. I wanted to drink some coffee, and you showed me a beautiful cup, so I began to brew some. Now I find your cup is as yet unbaked; the coffee will melt it and absorb its clay. You didn't trick me; I just assumed it was ready. The kiln is heating slowly, the coffee is cooling rapidly, I don't know what to do.

I PRAYED FOR FIRE

You told me that you love me but that you're afraid you're not ready to let someone love you and that, though the future may hold a place for us, the present is going to be static electricity and we'll have to go slow to see if it can be conducted without lightning striking. But you told me all this in Russian and I don't speak Russian, so that when we pressed ourselves into one another, you prayed for warmth while I prayed for fire.

Caught

We are sitting outside a park under a blue tarp eating potatoes and paranthas and discussing digital news functionalities. Across the smooth wide street is the multi-storey urban approximation of a Buddhist Monastery; delicate white travellers go in and come out. A gently dog slinks about around the food smells, routing through trash; he is startled by the plastic bottle flung at him by a young waiter. A portly man leans against a motorcycle (or vice versa) and pulls dramatically from a little cigarette, striking an irresistible pose; I whip out my little black box and catch him in it. We drink tea and talk about catching and getting caught, and with one eye I am looking at the branches above as they catch the light. A pair of improbably white loafers catch my eye and I guffaw. It doesn't seem like we are in the most polluted city on the planet somehow. And as we are paying the bill, a young man with two friends and a perfectly heart-shaped birthmark on his neck walks to a table and sits down.

TENSION

It seemed simple: from one end she pulls and from the other I pull until the line is taut enough for one of us to walk across. But the flaw was even simpler: the line goes slack when one of us lets go.

Extreme measures

I think I'm going to have to learn a new language just so I can write you a love note.

YOU'VE GOT THE WRONG GUY; or, JUST A DRUNKEN SCRAWL

Wasted days

When you walk in the door and open your face I can tell immediately that I am headed for a rash of wasted days. And before you even begin speaking I am preparing myself for life on fast forward, speeding through the hours until sunset, sleeping till sunrise, speeding, sleeping, speeding to get some time behind me, however, whatever, I will just have to put some days between this one and myself, as a buffer or a muffle or something else soft and hazy enough to dull what will be just under the surface now for so many weeks to come. And before you even get to your point I have slumped somewhere deep into a hollow of terror, held upright only by a taut cord of certainty. Soon, you will be out the door and it will begin: I will begin to do all those unpleasant things I know must be done and fill my days with them unthinkingly, desperate to just keep going and going and going till suddenly this moment is too far away to matter so much and I can start slowing down enough to notice time again.