APLOMB

Through perfectly perpendicular threadlike strands, I can see her profile, plainly, despite the distance, in the haze of my own reflection. Never as close as I desire, but close enough to recognize, her comfortability unnerves me and simultaneously causes a yearning of discovery that lures my focus away from the handsome faceless man sitting across from me. Steam rises off the porcelain, while his demitasse intentionally agitates the espresso atop the ordinary white cloth speaking words I struggle to hear. With him and nowhere, I am irrelevant, hidden under the luminous gaze of high hats above me, juxtapose to her likeness. Waiters continuously whisk by us, coming and going balancing trays and checks, all of them faceless too, unwittingly, except for her.

"So what exactly do you do? Did you say you are in sales or marketing?"

This I hear him say, and begin to answer mechanically, again, in her shadow, sure that the first time I tried to explain the details of my employment he was also somewhere else, drifting down the Mississippi, far off, while I, feeling raftless and submerged, was thankful to let a few words swim, in defiance of the obvious heavy current where I hide deep below the water's surface, unreachable between the boulders.

Painfully repelled, and visually drawn, it is her hair that most enthralls me, more than her china doll face, straight, shy shoulder length, each and every strand, all 100,000 follicles, caress her head proudly, uniformly, as if they were just effortlessly combed 1,000 times. The diamonds on her ears sparkle though valueless in comparison to the color of blond, too light for yellow gold it is more genuine, platinum. It is hard to imagine the wind has ever found and penetrated her peerless imperturbable coiffure, although I am sure she could find the wind, at will, and confront its force effortlessly should she desire. If she recognized me, would she laugh unmercifully as I crawl, head down, unable to finish a simple sentence?

Far away from him, farther from me, I long to touch her, permission granted, missing every opportunity, arrested, with only myself to blame. Perhaps if I move just so, a little to the right, or rather left; I don't know. Sighted, I am blind, because it is what cannot be seen under the platinum responsible for consuming all my sensibilities, causing moments when I cannot validate if I have ever really seen her, or if she is just a phantasm, even though she does pass in front of me every time a mirror is in view.