I saw you today. It was just
a glimpse but
Your image was a blazing filament
stamping a purple echo
on my retinas. The black
of your hair and the gravity of your eyes
had
charred
a mark on my skin,
and your throaty voice had crackled
through my veins.

The sight you
took me back to May
Then you were like candy to me
strange and bright and shiny
And I couldn’t be satisfied
with just a taste
or even a feast;
no amount of time or food
could have assuaged my starvation,
for want of you.

When you tripped and fell,
was it at my feet?
It’s just that
now your face
looks
more foreign to me than your texts
As if we had never
admitted our magnetism, like
our newfound informality had never existed.

I saw you today.
And you saw me.
But there was only silence between us
in the din of the room.
I stood
there in the commons,
a dark spot
of stillness in the blur,
searching the crowd for

us

—RAINISSA