Writers Jam

4.8.25.

Strange sensations. It’s 8.45 pm. There is a cacophony of intermixed voices but I can hardly get myself to tune in. 

I am sitting on the balcony of The Concert Hall in Toronto. Below in a haze of huddled bodies, a girl with an assassin’s smile has robbed me of all my mental faculties & my breath. How in the fuck do I feel so intoxicated just from looking at her tender, treacherous smile for the last 15 minutes? 

Yes my love, I confess to you
I am only here to break your heart in two
The very flower you chose that day
Its only task was to decay
You see?

She stands in the pit, surrounded by many faces. Some familiar, others palpably not so but ensnared all the same. Even as Tamino takes the center stage, the one I came to see, the lights in the room appear to orbit around the small of her back.

The sharpness of her nose, how her shoulder blades glide magnificently when she leans in close to her friend. In a slow & elegant move of the hand, she tries to tuck away runaway streaks of her cascading hair. My pulse is irregular now, & my heart is fluttering. 

There’s a cosmic pull, & I don’t know if I’ll take the leap. The red light accentuates her features immaculately. Our eyes have not met just yet but something tells me I’d lose myself in them effortlessly. 

When I watched your first bathing
I only warned you with a lowered voice
"Be wary of my river's undertow
It flows with water from the coldest source"
Did you hear?

Am I insane to ask the question if she senses any of this, if she’s noticed me by any inkling of a chance, or is it pure vanity? Perhaps wishful thinking?

The way her hand sits close to her neck is making me wonder how my hand might look there instead. Her hair is perched in an elegantly messy bun, & two flirty bangs now adorn her face. I wish I had roses I could gently place in them. 

And then I made sure
You would always return
You still know of dawn
But you always return

This electrified tension & seduction by pure virtue of sight are new for me, & all the more maddening & uncontainable for it. I feel like a dam at the edge of bursting at seams, incapable of holding back a flood of bone-deep longing. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve met before. In a distant timeline. In a faraway cosmos. In a half-lived fever dream. 

Is my soul recognizing something in her face I can’t quite put my finger on? Is this lust? Or am I just a yearner yearning? A dreamer dreaming dreams of a love of earth-shattering proportions?

When you hid under my black wings
They couldn't have protected you from anything
Once in flight they would have let go
You would have once again wound up below
Only broken

Seeing her laugh just a moment ago sent monumental jolts of electricity down my spine. She’s wearing a black backless dress, & I am afraid it might be the death of me. Even as the cold breeze from the air conditioner hits my face, my cheeks are scarlet & hot to the touch. 

The thought of her reading these words just revealed itself ever so seductively. It may be devastatingly beautiful, or beautifully devastating. Every time she reaches in her bag for her phone, I can see the vertebrae in her spine move with the poise of a snake that newly shed its skin. 

Indeed, it's wrong to keep you near me
One could call me cruel and deceiving
But in your sacred air I am full of light
Your loving arms are the true delight
To which I'm lost

8.29.25.

Strange sensations. I wish I’d said something that day. Or read this to her. I remember the riot in my head when I walked slowly downstairs after the concert came to a close.

As I stepped out into the chilly midnight breeze, my knees damn near buckled when I looked 10 feet to my right to see her standing there with her friends, laughing, playing with her hair. Queen of the night, now finally in her element – her natural habitat. 

And you've noticed it
There is something right here
You have come to love, yes you've come to love
What you always will fear

As I fidgeted with my fingers, my mind cannibalized itself in an infinite loop. Should I go steal her from her friends for a minute? What if this is the only window of opportunity I have? Who am I kidding? This IS my only chance. At this instant, a sudden wave of nervousness had pulled me under, paralyzing my body & pulverizing my ability to use all extremities. 

This may be a figment of my imagination altogether, but I swallowed entire galaxies in the few earth-shattering instances of split-second eye contact we shared over the course of that transcendent Spring night. 

Yes, my love, I confess to you
I've nothing but the means to break your heart in two
My part in yours may seem important now
But with every spring it will seem so small
Just for now I am your fall
I am your fall
I am your fall

Where could she be now? Is she alone, or with a lover? Does he want her like I do? Can he undress her soul with the gravity of his words? Or does he simply care for the feeling of her skin against his?