I look at her, like I do for the alternate two days of every week since this semester started, and somehow, she doesn’t belong. She lunches with me every Monday and Thursday, and we talk about so many things that aren’t connected to each other, and I can’t help but notice that somehow, we’re seated across the table and yet she’s so far away. It’s like a blob of green and white pain that cuts across a painting and takes out our hands and legs and what remains of our lower bodies, and I’m trying to smile with and through my soul when I can’t feel anything from chest-down. Maybe this is how a ghost feels like.

Standing behind her, I almost blanch at the thought; her waist beckons, an action I can ill-afford. It is a moment that stands alone, a stray leaf among the hundreds and thousands of little brown snowflakes floating amongst, against and away from each other.

There is nothing wrong, I hear myself whisper. There’s nothing wrong, and the sudden wave of embarrassment is strangely, depressingly satisfying.

My arm is halfway across before I realize, and when I do it holds back on its own, like it already knew that it had to try and fail and then retreat in isolation. The black satin-like material shimmers in the dim lighting, tantalizing, provocative in its allure, waiting for curious fingers to run and smooth over along the creases that run almost invisibly silent around the round edges. I wait expectantly for her to turn and her eyes to widen in disbelief, her mouth to widen in a series of shapes that emit sounds of joy or surprise; I don’t know, I won’t know, because they can’t be heard, at least to me. I don’t want to hear derision, chagrin, and a thousand other discouraging tones, but it is not up to me.

Her face is half seen in the shadows. It helps that her skin is dark, not black or brown, but a darker shade of gold and yellow that blends in with the stage lights. I see her image, eyes half-closed, engraved in an expression of wordless serenity. And I see my own face, just half of the left side, coming in close to hers.

I know now it’s not a dream. It wasn’t an ephemeral moment, it wasn’t just lust taking over me, it was something real, and I can finally cry in relief.