Lost in the Lines
You wore a white button down and a purple v-neck sweater and a black-and-white checked bowtie that didn’t really fit the style of the sweater and made the space between your neck and the tip of the v where your white shirt was showing look much longer than it probably was.
You sat at the other end of the table and I was too worried about staring at you for too long to make conversation with the other guests and I put on a smile but the calculations in my head were churning and I’m not sure I was even really there.
She was wearing a slouchy beanie like the ones in my mother’s knitting magazines. It was gold and glittery and it hung from the back of her hair as she turned her face toward you and I watched you laugh at her jokes. And I wondered if you were really there.
And we stood in your kitchen as you filled your mason jar with wine and neither of us was really asking about the other one but we kept saying words and making sentences and I wonder why I didn’t ask more and why I kept talking about my god damned self about my god damned self and why didn’t I ask you what instrument you played or where you were going over the summer or anything anything beyond myself and I was trapped by your gaze and I forgot everything that I knew and sentences were like dungeons and I want to be silent with you.
Do you, too, get lost in the lines?